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beatle20359 Author

Level 2

314 points

A Sad day.. Xserve discontinued...

http://images.apple.com/xserve/pdf/L422277AXserveGuide.pdf

Personally I'm not the least bit happy about this.. I don't want a rack full of MacPro's or a shelf full of under powered mac mini's... I utilise the LOM card.. I run 2 power supplies and want the ability to quickly and easily hot swap parts.... I know this is not the place for writing such things but I am disappointed to see the end of a great product with no true replacement available for it.

Many thanks
Beatle

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Nov 5, 2010 4:06 AM

202 replies

Dec 30, 2010 3:18 PM in response to Mr. Palmier

Apple is doing what it has always done and that's push forward in the development of it's hardware/software that sells! Let's face it, there were much cheaper hardware solutions on the market to implement! Guys please remember that 80% of business on the planet is small business and most of them can't afford a top end rack server and all the bells and whistles that go with that! Apple is not trying to kill their enterprise market, they are moving towards what the enterprise solutions that their customer base is interested in! I personally agree with the move from a business stand point! Apple will never move away from the Mac Pro or the MacBook Pro for the graphics and production side of things! Apple is the leader in post production power and is the standard in the video market with FCS! OS X isn't going anywhere but up!

Jan 2, 2011 10:49 PM in response to beatle20359

I'd really like to believe that Apple has a long term plan for pro level server requirements, the mini and the Mac Pro certainly will not cut it. You can write off any data center that has a mixed environment of PCs and Macs, the mini is underpowered and the Pro does not fit within an economical amount of space. Neither system supports dual power supplies, virtually unheard of in the professional server industry. Nor do they have integrated Lights Out Management, extremely useful for restarting a server when it's sitting in a data center 50 miles away. The mini cannot be outfitted with a Fibre Channel card (not that I would considering it is locked into a Core 2 Duo chipset) nor does it support dual ethernet.

The transition document that Apple provided indicates this is the end of the line for the Xserve. Coincidentally the Mac Pro has gotten extremely long in the tooth as well, other than the requisite speed bumps required to keep it viable, the Mac Pro has not gone through a major upgrade in years. The Xeon class has been around since 2001 and has received commendable upgrades but it is looking like a dinosaur with it's power usage and 32nm architecture.

What I'd like to see is Apple announce a new 1U server architecture built around the Itanium processor that Intel released in 2008. Along with it would be the return of dual power supplies, LOM and Lion Server. Throw in a new 8G Fibre Channel card, FireWire P1394d and room for 64GB of RAM and I'd be ecstatic!

Crazy? Who's to say, but I'd be very happy to hear Apple hasn't abandoned the high end server market.

Jan 4, 2011 10:33 AM in response to Wallace Karraker

This is a bad decision for sure -like something Apple would have done in the mid 1990s. Exiting the business market doesn't make any sense at all. Many school districts and companies use Apple hardware and software.

We are led to believe that this is simply a decision to discontinue a hardware platform, but it looks like the beginning of the end for OSX Server and the Power Mac. As Apple turns to consumer devices (toys not tools) and begins to move toward "cloud computing" (aka Chinese labor camps with servers in them), I worry that their OS is going to radically change: more proprietary, more locked down, less functional, etc.

I reall hope they change course here, and that they come out with a viable business-class OS that runs on a 1U platform. Better yet, let us virtualize OSX Server!

Jan 5, 2011 11:17 AM in response to DaReal_Dionysus

First off, stop using exclamation points. Second, you are really incorrect concerning most of your statements. Apple does not care about their enterprise market, there are enough apple fanatics in high level positions that IT departments have to support apple products. If you ask any of them, they will tell you that the tools available to support them, provided by apple, are really not up to industry standard. They know their fan base will continue to drive sales even in the corporate sector, so they let everyone else do the leg work. I would not expect another version of XSAN or Final Cut Server anytime soon. My guess is they will be phased out shortly after the last xserves go out of warranty. Or possibly before.

beatle20359 Author

Level 2

314 points

Jan 5, 2011 12:39 PM in response to swander42

I agree with some of your comments. However I do think that from a business point of view the more areas of IT that Apple covers the better Apple are viewed in the IT world. Regardless of the love Steve Jobs does or doesn't have for the enterprise, their ability to cover areas like video editing, rendering, compositing, audio production and server hardware/software on a grander scale has always served them well.. The tools used to manage Apple products are fine in most cases and as with most things there are some alternatives if they don't suit. If your talking AD then it can be done as well.

It's still baffling why they are removing the Xserve it can't just be about money as it's just a drop spilt from a very big bucket and one that has probably had a good knock on effect on the sales of other Apple products. You're right that Apple has a lot of fanatics, i'd have to lump myself in with them, so moving away from a 90% Windows setup to a 95% Apple setup wasn't a problem for me but will be in the future due to the axe looming over the Xserve. The alternatives offered by Apple don't currently provide what I need..

Apart from the reduction in time spent on user support. The biggest change was the amount of staff that request to buy their macs when they leave, some have never used one others have had limited exposure. Our PC users don't have the same kind of empathy towards their machines at all. Hopefully in the 2-3 years that it takes for us to start looking at upgrades something else will be on the market or cloud computing will have taken off in a big enough way to not warrant the need for servers on site.

The change for us really gained momentum when we implemented FCP on a G5 and Rumpus FTP as a way to transfer files to clients, people really took to the ease of use, the requests for buying mac laptops increased and the need for us to move from Win2k meant the Xserve was the perfect fit. On top of what we saved from not having to buy CAL's we ended up with a great solution that hasn't had any problems at all.. If something else doesn't materialise the pendulum will swing the other way as alternative OS's and hardware might prove to be the cheaper and better options.

Apple should think about schools & higher education establishments and how many have implemented the Xserve then purchased Macs for students to use. This will have had a positive impact on the students who will consider purchasing Apple products for use at home. I was lucky to go to school when Macs were in the classroom in the early 90's and as much as I'm a qualified MS engineer the impression the Mac had on me back then has shaped the way I do things today.

We have another 26 days before we say goodbye to a loyal friend that has and still serves many of us well. I do hope we get more of an olive branch from Apple on the future of OS X server and the pro-apps but I wont hold my breath.

Beatle

Zlyx

Level 1

10 points

Jan 7, 2011 11:33 PM in response to beatle20359

You have to make your views known to Apple:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/xserve.html

The Unisys deal does seem to point to something, though coupled with North Carolina, what exactly is a little hard to say. My gut tells me they're unrelated: North Carolina is for the cloud (iTunes & MobileMe), and not a test bed for some Xserve replacement:

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/07/21/the-technology-inside-app les-new-idatacenter/

The Unisys deal (and hints of Oracle courting) points to something similar to the XRAID -- a third-party providing hardware to run the software on.

At the very least, it's fair to say the news is a public relations ----up, at least for us.

I agree with other posters about the Xserve's service as a gateway drug: For every Windoze box I've retired and replaced with an iMac or Mini on the client-side, an end-user has purchased an iMac, iPhone, or iPod Touch for the home. Every one.

It's because of this that I feel Steve, to paraphrase what he's said himself, truly doesn't understand the enterprise market. Yes, the people who make the decision about the server don't use it; the other people, who get to see how great the server makes their job, end up voting in droves.

Well, I'll still get a few years out of my current box.

And we'll find out soon one way or the other.

FLYFI5H

Level 1

9 points

Jan 23, 2011 2:36 PM in response to Zlyx

It is very risky to design your future on vaporware. I find it unconscionable that a company is discontinuing a product to secretly release a different product at a later date and/or offer a solution that frankly is not a reasonable solution as a server. It sends a message that the company does not care for the customer base it has sold trust and partnership with. We switched to Apple from Windows. I have 6 Xservers and planned on ordering 4 more this year. Ultimately we will have ( would have had ) 16 Xservers. My data center is a small room that we designed with rack mount servers in mind and special air conditioning and power design. One full size rack would hold all my servers and one rack would hold our mass storage. How am I going to place 16 Mac Pros in that same space? I guess my user base can go back to pc base. We could stop our transition over to Mac. Reassigning the room is more expensive than switching back. I do not see that the Mac Pros offer redundancy. Is this seriously the way Apple will run it's business?

godrich

Level 1

0 points

Jan 24, 2011 7:12 AM in response to beatle20359

From day one, we have had issues with this hardware. More specifically, the raid array with occasional drive crashes not allowing write up, but can copy from. In the past 6 months, we have had to rebuild half of the raid and the same set of drives each time. In October of 2009 they replaced every board, network card, backplane and controllers in both the xserver and raid. The only thing they have not replaced were the drives where we have been having the issues. And, we have reinstalled the OS 3 times. We just recently had one more crash on the same set of raid drives with the same issue (can copy from but not to the raid) Our raid is split into two sets with drives 1-7 and 8-14 separated. Drives 1-7 are the constant problem. There is nothing in Raid admin indicating any of the drives are having issues. Apple is still denying the drives are the problem when our history experience with this issue indicates otherwise.

I must add also, Apple's enterprise support was far from being anything close to the norm compared to other companies such as HP/Dell, etc. In a word, horrendous support, especially without offering extended support packages beyond AppleCare. Its hindsight now, but neither I nor anyone on this company would ever suggest Apple for any enterprise hardware and support.

Apple is getting out because they can't play with the big boys as far as enterprise services.

hvail

Level 1

21 points

Jan 25, 2011 8:04 AM in response to beatle20359

This is a far out question but would it be possible to use the HP Media Smart Server as an OSX Server?

skipxx

Level 1

8 points

Jan 31, 2011 2:48 PM in response to hvail

bye :'(

Feb 1, 2011 5:32 AM in response to beatle20359

I agree. Who would want a rack full of Mac Pros or a shelf full of underpowered Mac minis?
I am disappointed also.

Feb 4, 2011 9:39 AM in response to beatle20359

What is Apple doing? They have produce a great server OS to manage our Mac clients and not forgetting the Xserve Raid, then instead of upgrading the Xserve raid they ditch it and rely on another company to supply us with a Raid. Now there getting rid of the excellent Xserve, are the expecting another company to provide a proper server for there OS, because if the are, its not a good road to go down!
Apple Hardware with Apple OS it works fine lets hope it stays that way.

The reason i say this is Apple cannot be serious about large organisations kitting out there server rooms with Mac Pro's (I'm not even going to talk about Mac Mini's....DOH!).

Very Disappointing Apple. Is this about the customer or the bottom line MONEY!

Feb 6, 2011 1:19 AM in response to beatle20359

It is my view that most Apple server products provided a convenient comfort zone for those with little non-Apple experience but at considerable cost. Getting Apache to work on Linux mounted on inexpensive hardware is not difficult although providing AFP is more tedious.

In my experience the main trap for the unwary is the longevity of disk drives. My answer is to always buy bare drives and make sure they have a five year guarantee. I have found that since the demise of MTBF the guarantee period is the best guide to disk quality. Notwithstanding the slightly higher price and possibly noise level these drives also work well in desktops.

gen_

Level 2

368 points

Feb 6, 2011 6:07 PM in response to Neville Hillyer

Investing in apple server hardware in my eyes is illogical and quite frankly dumb.

Apple source all thier parts at a significantly smaller price from common PC manufacturers and, contrary to common belief most of it is not workstation grade let alone server grade parts. They dont supply the manufacturers names so you buy from them at increased cost and the issues caused by running a server you dont know the innards of is already well documented. Thier support people are foolhardy and inexperienced, and worse still are afflicted with a constant belief that the problem is anything but the most obvious thing! (I would not be surprised if they insisted that a SMART failure on a hard drive was down to my video card because they really dont know **** )

The OS, whilst sturdy and relatively efficient suffers from one of the most damage prone filestructures in existence and a fragile permissions system that requires daily scheduled repairs to keep it from degrading into a mess of access errors. Its great on the user end just as Windows XP is great on the user end, and as expected it provides good integration with OS X clients, but the simp-le fact is, every manager worth his salt will use linux for OS X intergration.

Why, because in server land, where OS's abilities are stressed to extremes, OS X is a bloated, closed source linux, with a fancy shell and nearly all package repositories closed to it. And a rubbish network stack.

Translation - Useless.

PS Yes its negative, but as someone who has watched server reliability absolutely assassinated in my educational institution simply because the principal (of all people) ordered the tech guys to switch to an xsan based system, I think know what I am talking about. XSan only really has functionality over a Linux server when using it as a node for FCP/Logic. Otherwise its just a fanboy server admins wet dream.

FLYFI5H

Level 1

9 points

Feb 7, 2011 10:09 AM in response to gen_

I agree with some of your assessment. I do think the server support was hit with the problem of expanding company due to sales. I had ok service as long as I barked high enough up the tree. That gets tiring. As far as Linux goes, that is a good solution and a battle that may become easier with the Administration given the cancellation of the Xserve. I would like to hear more of what you have done with Linux. Contact me offline, if you will, and we can talk.

A Sad day.. Xserve discontinued...