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Comment by robgough | Hacker News Reader

I presume there's no info about what kit they're actually using in there? I'm guessing it's not XServes?

Sadly, this is the one piece of the operation about which there doesn't seem to be a flood of rumors, let-alone informed ones.

Being Apple, could they possible have a joint announcement planned for both the facility and for a total makeover of XServe line (emphasizing GreenPower, price-wise farm-suitable servers). Would it not be embarrassing for Apple to stock the place with a non-Apple product? At the same time, would it not be absurd to risk the success of a data center this size on an (relatively) inefficient, second-rate hardware config?

Either way, it should be an opportunity for a huge Apple PR event.

Gruber seems to believe that they are most certainly not using Xserves: “You don’t think Apple is filling that North Carolina data center with Xserves, do you?” (http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/10/22/gosling-java-mac...) He, however, doesn’t indicate whether that’s speculation or whether he has sources.

Another question would be to the OS on the servers. Darwin running headless, maybe?

When James Gosling was moaning about Apple deprecating their JVM he mentioned that Apple's WebObjects stuff was actually running on Sun hardware.

http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/steve_jobs_comments_o...

Fingers crossed, though I rather suspect they will keep this schtum (especially if they've gone non-apple).

Alternatively, I might just be full of Mac Mini Server boxes — but I wouldn't bet on it.

This article has some info from the job postings for the center: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/07/21/the-t...

"data center environment consists of MacOS X, IBM/AIX, Linux and SUN/Solaris systems." and more details on the infrastructure and networking parts.

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