Apple deprecates XServe | Hacker News Reader

Apple deprecates XServe

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46 pointssteilpass45 comments

Steve is famous for telling his employees that Apple has to focus on what they do best. First Java and now the XServe. Apple must be taking inventory.

Yes, just look at the iPhone/-Pad sales.. then look at the Xserve sales. Makes sense.

I'm guessing that the Mac Mini Server ate a lot of the Xserve sales because the Mac Mini Server is way cheaper and is sufficient powerful for most workgroups, when you add a couple of external disks.

The price of a similar loaded Mac Pro is close to the price of an Xserve, so the only real advantage are the rack mount, lights-out admin and dual power supply. That might not be enough to keep sales going at the high end, having the low-end eaten by Mac Mini Servers.

And in other news, Apple is going to ditch XServe.

Is there any way to condense the five duplicates of this story into one? At the moment, the top 5 slots on the HN homepage all have an "X" in the title.

It's 3 duplicates + 2 separate stories about other things that contain the letter X.

It is one of those can't-make-this-stuff-up coincidences, though, that Canonical would drop the X Server on the very same day that Apple dropped the XServe.

This makes perfect sense. I've been wondering why they keep selling the Xserves anyway. It's not Apple's market and they can't differentiate themselves enough in the server market.

The differentiated themselves alright, by making a substandard server, you cant virtulize. It looked nice on the shelf.

Right. The server software will live on, but it's more for small-mac-based offices and administering those macs. I've never seen anyone outside of 40-man design companies with an xserve. Nowadays a mac mini can handle that load fairly well.

Make that 40-man design shops & Biotech labs that don't have the manpower to maintain a decent analysis pipeline. I saw a bio Xserve setup a few years ago & was blown away by ... how 'shiny' the setup was. But that was about it: Xserves make no sense if what you're after is raw power.

Xserve traction didn't really occur. OSX is different from both Linux and Solaris, so command line fans didn't appreciate it.

In terms of hardware, the decision to make proprietary drive module trays, driving up the cost of adding disks, killed any sales to those who were price sensitive.

On top of that their rack mounting hardware is/was horrendous. It took me 15 minutes to get my XServe mounted and I had to break out the tools. By comparison, an old Dell PE1650 took about 30 seconds and no tools.

Not surprising that they got no traction.

We got one 6 years ago on the theory that one could have the same desktop/laptop vs. server experience, and then ran into the cold hard reality that running server software is just plain different than desktop (GUI) software. Plus, their GUI was just scratching the surface of what one needs, and even got in the way some of the time (by clobbering command-line work).

Linux/Windows have won for servers (we're using Rackspace/Ubuntu now), so it's good they recognize that and move on.

> Plus, their GUI was just scratching the surface of what one needs, and even got in the way some of the time (by clobbering command-line work).

Having experienced this firsthand, I am wondering how much of an effect this had on Xserve adoption overall, ie for companies other than smallish design shops.

Wow, this is a serious blow to all mac shops. There are tons of Xserve around. And what about the server stuff like FinalCut Studio? Mac Pro are nice machines, but they're positively huge.

> Wow, this is a serious blow to all mac shops. There are tons of Xserve around.

They're clearly saying they'll keep supporting the existing Xserves (as much as they have so far, which is not much), you can keep buying it until January, and the Mac Mini Server [0] does not seem deprecated, so I assume there will be a 10.7 Server.

IOW, no this is not a serious blow to anybody, please RTFA.

[0] http://www.apple.com/macmini/server/

Hum. I have lots of customers with X-Serves in render farms (different batch FX, transcoding, etc), really Mac Pro or Mac mini won't cut it. Ok, any 1U Dell would be fine, except for all this Mac OS software they already paid for, and the fact that they'd rather stay Mac only. In the video world, that definitely is a blow.

> I have lots of customers with X-Serves in render farms (different batch FX, transcoding, etc)

And their render farms will not stop working tomorrow will they?

> really Mac Pro or Mac mini won't cut it.

Power-wise, mac pros are strictly superior to xserves at equivalent prices fwiw. Though they're not rackable (which is probably the main issue) and do have the issue of no redundant power supply.

> Power-wise, mac pros are strictly superior to xserves at equivalent prices fwiw.

Are you only trying to be naggingly contrarian, or is it your true nature showing? Render farms are made with dense systems, 1U or blades. You can put 6 Mac Pro for a grand total of 72 cores, vs. 44 XServes with 352 cores in a standard rack. Now please explain to me how better the Mac Pro would be.

This makes me wonder what Apple uses and will use in their own data centers. Will they continue to use Xserves and maintain that line for their own use?

For at least some things, they're using Oracle Unbreakable Linux, not Mac OS X.

(Oracle Enterprise/Unbreakable Linux is basically just rebranded Red Hat Enterprise.)

I'd be surprised if they were using Xserves at any scale in their datacentres - it's not really what the Xserve was suitable for. By Netcraft, the Apple domains that aren't on Akamai are mostly 'unknown' rather than 'macosx': http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?host=apple.com

A very fair question. What with the new data center (Maiden NC) I've been wondering how they planned to populate it. Obviously Google took a different path with DC infrastructure (custom design, custom build). Could it be that Apple is going to follow ? Or will they buy large quantities of Sun or IBM systems. The latter would certainly indicate a sea change (after the AIM disintegration).

Note that nothing I've read so far this morning indicates that OS X Server is being deprecated, only the XServe line. XServe RAID went away a few years back. Is it possible that Apple plans to continue using OS X Server under virtualization (on other branded hardware) ? That would be a really big deal.

If they take the eat-your-own-dog-food approach, they might install a fair share of Mac Mini Servers. They aren't nearly as powerful as the deprecated Xserve, but they sip energy, an important consideration in a data center. Depending on them for infrastructure would encourage Apple to make them more robust. With low energy consumption and a nice form factor, improving performance could make them more of a contender than Xserve ever was.

That would be a big deal if they supported virtualization on other hardware. Is it possible that it's a first step towards a more open (in regards to hardware requirements) OS X in general?

I–personally–like OS X server for a lot of applications. But, the bottom line is important for businesses and private consumers. XServes never fit into that consideration as well as they could have.

Expect an announcement soon that we'll be able to install OS X Server inside ESX or similar virtualized environment. (or so a reliable source tells me…)

Gruber doesn't think they will be using Xserves: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/10/22/gosling-java-mac...

Is 'scribd' a synonym for 'pdf' nowadays? well done, scribd ;)

[edit] I know what scribd is and does, I am referring to the title of this item which has [scribd] appended to it, although it links to a pdf.

You know, I really dislike scribe; the PDF format really works just fine on its own.

I wish there was a way to remove it from my Google searches. :(

Except when you have a slightly old version of Adobe/Acrobat and get a virus/malware.

Workaround: use any other PDF reader at all.

Not really at all. That scribd link is there because Hacker News is run by Y-Combinator and scribd is a YC company.

The [scribd] tag itself is a link to the scribd version and does not refer to the whole title being a scribd link.

The scribd link takes the original PDF and translates it for you into a (more or less) pixel-equivalent HTML page.

My current employer has a couple of XServes running a WebObjects based webapp. This might create some headaches for us.

Are there 19" racking solutions for the Mac Pro (just on the off-chance one might want to stick one in a 19" rack)?

According to the 'Transition Guide' that Apple released, you can stand 2 Mac Pros on a shelf side by side, using 12U of rack space.

Sounds practical to me :-|.

If Apple wants to be taken seriously as a server software vendor, they would be far better off to allow virtualization of OS X Server only and let people run it on HP/IBM/Dell/Oracle/Sun x86 hardware.

I can buy an 8 socket 8 core x86 server with 64 threads and an additional 64 virtual threads, and 1TB of RAM that only takes 5U of rack space.

"If Apple wants to be taken seriously as a server software vendor'

I really think they don't want to. They've never cared about anything related to businesses using OS X for servers or even good desktop management.

You're right, but there are Pro users that want a server to farm out Final Cut rendering and other such tasks. That was the target market for Xserve.

A market still does exist for Apple servers - a small one. This market would be best served by virtualization of OS X Server.

> If Apple wants to be taken seriously as a server software vendor

They don't. If they did, they wouldn't drop the xserve.

> they would be far better off to allow virtualization of OS X Server only and let people run it on HP/IBM/Dell/Oracle/Sun x86 hardware.

This suggestion is utterly moronic. Once again, Apple is a hardware vendor. OSX exists for the sole purpose of selling Apple hardware. The only reason they sold (and still sell, see Mac Mini Server and Mac Pro server) OSX-based server machines is to support whole networks of Apple hardware.

Apple's pdf link http://images.apple.com/xserve/pdf/L422277A_Xserve_Guide.pdf

It's quite logical. Apple is really better at User Experience than Enterprise level solutions. Getting rid of distractions will reinforce their main business models.

my boss literally shed a tear when he saw this

of joy?

of sadness, for whatever reason he loves the Xserve line. Perhaps because he can use the Mac GUI on a server

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