

Apple to abandon their XServe line  - drgvond
http://www.apple.com/xserve/resources.html?aosid=p204&siteid=403761&program_id=2701&cid=OAS-EMEA-AFF&tduid=8ec33a93d3bb4f1e4f99cbcd7b271cac

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jrwoodruff
I always thought it was awesome that they carried the attention to design over
to their server line, but this move honestly makes a lot of sense. Enterprise
server solutions isn't really their game.

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sudont
Other than administering client macs, there really wasn't any benefit to
running a cluster of mac servers. Apple's game has always been getting the
difficulty threshold low enough that mom and pop can do whizzy things. In
terms of servers, anybody running that type of hardware will probably have the
expertise to do it from scratch, cobble together a solution, or outsource it
to a contractor.

While there could be something in enterprise iPhone management, I think they
play well enough with exchange's provisioning.

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masklinn
> Other than administering client macs, there really wasn't any benefit to
> running a cluster of mac servers.

Bingo. Apple's server offering have always been (and will continue to be)
expected to support a whole network of apple hardware. In that situation,
xserves don't really make sense anymore, they're fairly crappy general-purpose
servers and you don't need an xserve to support an OSX-based network and OSX's
group utilities. The Mini Server is much smaller for minor networks, and the
base Mac Pro Server offering is the same price as the entry-price Xserve, not
really rackable but with far superior hardware: 2.26 quad, 3GB RAM and 160GB
HDD for the Xserve, 2.8 quad, 8GB RAM and 2x1TB HDD for the Mac Pro.

Plus the Mac Pro

* comes with a GPU if you want a render farm

* scales to more memory (up to 32GB versus 24 for the Xserve, and bumping the Mac Pro to 24GB is $450 cheaper than the Xserve)

* scales to much bigger CPUs (you can get a better CPU on the Xserve by switching to the $3600 model, which starts with 2x2.26GHz quads and can get up to 2x2.93 quads, but the mac pro can still be upgraded to 2x2.93 hexas)

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patrickgzill
Which of the remaining Apple machines take ECC memory? You really should not
be running a serious server without ECC, which allows the hardware to detect
and often correct transient errors caused by e.g. background radiation.

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jbarham
The Mac Pro uses ECC RAM (<http://www.apple.com/macpro/specs.html>), the Mac
Mini doesn't and can't since it has a Core 2 chip and Intel only supports ECC
w/ its Xeon chips.

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jonknee
I wonder what kind of machines they are using in their giant new data center.

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roqetman
Not sure how accurate this picture is, but I see xserve's and sun servers
there: [http://www.cultofmac.com/interview-apples-gigantic-new-
data-...](http://www.cultofmac.com/interview-apples-gigantic-new-data-center-
hints-at-cloud-computing/14680)

~~~
jonknee
That's of SystemX a Virginia Tech cluster dating back to 2003, not of Apple's
data center: <http://www.arc.vt.edu/arc/SystemX/>

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b3b0p
Where does this leave Mac OS X Server now? Is it dead? Will they continue to
develop it and for what purpose?

The only product that is currently using it is the Mac Mini Server as far as I
know.

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aaronbrethorst
And the just-announced Mac Pro Server:
[http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pr...](http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro)

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akronim
OS X Server is just OS X with some additional services and admin tools, and
probably less effort to maintain than a whole different hardware form. Given
that the Mac Pro Server was only just announced, it looks like that's the
tactical fix to fill the gap in the lineup left by the X-Serve.

After the X-Raid line's name was already passed onto a third party (Promise)
this isn't really surprising.

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xbryanx
It's always been challenging for me to administer a server running any Mac
Server products. They've made so many tweaks to do things slightly different
that everywhere else, it became quite difficult to troubleshoot.

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nickyp
I concur!

Ran a couple of Xserves a while ago to run web application stacks on it and
most of the time I diverged from using the GUI to administer things I shot
myself in the foot (Apache, firewalls, initscripts, networking etc.).

The nice hardware - those CPU load meters were gorgeous - unfortunately
doesn't make up for those problems so I switched back to non Apple hardware +
Linux and never looked back.

Don't fight the system is a nice mantra to follow when using Mac OS X Server
and that's not hard when you use it to administer a collection of other Macs &
the network they're on or when using the built-in services without wanting to
tweak/upgrade the versions yourself (iCal server, Mail server etc.).

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polynomial
> most of the time I diverged from using the GUI to administer things I shot
> myself in the foot

This is something you hopefully learned early or were told by an more
experienced Mac admin— configuring, let alone automating, Xserves from a CLI
is an exercise in futility as so many components system have been rewritten to
do things "the Apple Way."

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nickyp
Learned that soon enough, only 2 Xserves were used and the rest of the rack
quickly went back to Linux ;-) Although those puppies are still up-and-running
of course (my Xserve adventure was in 2003)

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fragmede
Reading between the lines, does this mean XSan is dying? It's software, but
like the XServe, it's a high level enterprise offering. Samba does a fine job
for low-end stuff, but XSan is still needed for high-end, high-bandwidth
applications.

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spitfire
xsan has always just been a rebranded san offering from quantum. It could go
away, but then you just buy quantums' thingy.

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fragmede
Xsan uses Quantum's Stornext, but last I checked (admittedly a while ago),
XSan _is_ the OS X client, so without Xsan, there is no OS X Stornext Client.
(I'd love to be proven wrong on this though.)

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forgotAgain
Abandon is too strong a word for the link given. Yes they are discontinuing it
for new sales but they will still support existing customers.

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qjz
It also looks like they plan to continue developing OS X Server. Plus, they
still have a hardware server offering in the Mac Mini Server.

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masklinn
> Plus, they still have a hardware server offering in the Mac Mini Server.

And the Mac Pro Server.

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mikedanko
Lion Server? Has there even been talk of it? Dead now?

I'd imagine the only use case for server that couldn't be done easily in a
better way was spotlight server, and it's only a matter of doing it more
cheaply than available CMS solutions.

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jonhendry
The only public talk about Lion has been entirely consumer focused. They
haven't delved into anything technical or server-oriented.

I'd assume they're doing stuff in those areas, they just haven't done any PR.

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sgt
My question is, what will Apple use internally for their server needs? I
assume at least a part of their servers are running Mac OS X Server.

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uxp
Apple mostly uses Sun Servers.

