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Apple To Discontinue Xserve
Toe, The writes "Apple has announced that they are discontinuing their line of 1u rack-mount servers. With their usual understated style, the announcement comes in the form of a box on their website and a transition guide (PDF) to their low-end Mac mini server or their now-more-powerful-than-Xserve Mac Pro server. Attitudes about the Xserve have ranged from considering it a token nod to enterprise to an underpowered wimp to a tremendous value. Apparently, the migration to Intel processors removed some of the value of clustering Xserves, leaving them somewhat overpriced compared to other, more traditional offerings. The odd thing is that Apple clearly has shown they have the capacity for enterprise, but rarely the will to take it on. So, does the discontinuation of their rack-mount mean they have abandoned enterprise for their post-PC offerings, or are they simply acknowledging that their products aren't gaining traction in the data center? Or do they have something else up their sleeve for next year?"
The Xserve has been largely redundant since Apple discontinued the Xraid. When you pair them up they make great file servers, the publishing company I used to work for loved them (yup, that's right, there *are* people for whom Apple servers make sense, go home haters).
Seeing as how there's nothing you can do with an Xserve that you can't do with a Mac Pro, the only difference is the rackmounting. Considering the way forward is Xsan, that's completely optional now even if all your storage is rackmounted. The SAN controller can be on the other side of the building as long as your fibre reaches it.
Nice as it was, goodbye redundant product. You'll be missed, but not for long.
It's not the 'ooo shiny' products that everyone knows Apple for, but their Server OS is quite good. As are some of their clustering capabilities.
After trying to setup a linux cluster, XGrid is nothing short of Magic. It's a check box in a system control panel. You can let anyone use a computer or password protect it. Buy 1+ Macs. Check "Allow for use on XGrid" (and even set to only use when it's been idle). Anytime you compile something in XCode, all other available Macs will be used. No setting up which servers to use in a .distcc file.
Their Server OS is also pretty polished. I know the hard core command line junkies think that everything should be done with vi/emacs and only configured from there. But not everyone wanting to run a server has that expertise. If I had to suggest a server to a friend for a small home business. I'd suggest the MacMini Server. Mail, Web, Jabber, OS Updates, Time Machine, etc.
I suggest checking it out (not sure if they have the server OS setup in any Apple Store) before knocking it.
If you worked in an organization where you hand to manage hundreds of desktop Macs it would dawn on you. I know places like that are not exactly everywhere, but they do exist...I know because I work at one. After our current Xserves reach the end of their useful life, there will be absolutely no enterprise class hardware that can be used for management and deployment of desktops. I'm sorry, but we will not be putting Minis on rack shelves for services (Open Directory, for example) that need to be available 24x7. The lack of redundant power supplies, lights out management and hot swappable drives is just not acceptable in an enterprise datacenter. I also cannot give up 6u per Mac Pro just to get the same 8-core speed that is currently available in a 1u box while I'm giving up those availability features. It's just not going to happen.
We're already pondering what life is going to be like with Windows-only desktops. It's possible Apple is going to pull off some announcement about OSX server availability on VMWare/HyperV or something (which would be acceptable for larger environments I guess) but I can't plan ahead for what they *might* announce. Frankly, it doesn't give me confidence in the future of OSX server in general. Without large deployments, people won't be needing things like Open Directory, so that could easily be dropped at some point, for example.
They are effectively removing themselves from consideration in large environments. Just a week or two ago, there were rumors they were going to make a bigger play in the enterprise space and I was anxious to see what they had in the pipeline. Now, suddenly we're looking at abandoning OSX as a platform almost completely at hundreds of desktops. We were about to put in an order for 50+ iMacs for the second or third time this year alone, but now those plans are on hold until we can get a new long term plan together. As a result, it is definitely going to be a factor in future iPad/iPhone deployment (which has been pretty positive thus far).
I never doubted Apple was evil, I didn't know they were dumb too.
teeker
Yes, they have something else up their sleeve. Did anybody notice Apple's "enterprise services agreement" with Unisys? http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Apple-Unisys-Agree-to-Enterprise-Services-Deal-Report-788654/ Did anybody notice the 54% drop in Unisys's profits, along with a drop in server sales? http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Unisys-3Q-profit-sinks-54-pct-apf-3818156357.html?x=0&.v=1 So, Unisys is an enterprise computing company looking for a way to save its server business. Apple is consumer electronics company with enterprise ambitions, enterprise software, but no enterprise distribution network. Apple just announced it is dropping its server hardware line, a little over a week after announcing the deal with Unisys. I know it is fashionable to dismiss Apple's enterprise computing ambitions. I was at an Apple Developer's seminar a couple years ago where they were showing off the new version (then) of MacOS X Server. The entire focus of that seminar was on how Apple was adding features to MacOS X Server (and even licensing things from Microsoft) to make OS X Server more suitable for the enterprise. I predict Unisys will start offering MacOS X Server on Unisys server hardware soon. Apple may even end up buying Unisys.