A Sad day.. Xserve discontinued...

This is indeed a very sad day for all of us enterprise admins. Apple should at the very least allow VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix to virtualize their OS.

For those of you who want to discuss this with other admins, join us on
irc.freenode.net in channel ##osx-server

There are about 40 of us there discussing what just happened.

Dan

Really sad. Mainly because no "real" alternative was offered. It does not look good. But, maybe, something will take it's place. At least they should have doubled up the power supply's on the "server" model of Mac Pro. But we get RAM and a shopping list to go to 3rd parties. What's with all the hubbub regarding the push in the enterprise? I vote for server OS independence.

A disheartening day for an Apple Certified System Administrator with 16 XServe's at our company, connected by fibre to a SAN. It has not been the easiest career path to find work as, but I thought that Apple would eventually storm into the enterprise, bringing abundant opportunities. I believe that Mac OS X Server is a great, versatile server solution. I think that their "transition" document released today means a transition for me, my career, and my company to Linux or Windows. I am very unhappy.

This is the most ridiculous decision, period. At this time, I run close to 40 xserves and approximately 60 mac workstations and two XSAN's. The windows side of my environment is less than 10 servers and my linux side is close to 125 servers. We are an all Apple environment for our users, authentication and storage. Apple, you have let your enterprise customers down big time. Seriously the thought that even offering us the alternative of mac pro's and mini's as replacements for the xserve is beyond absurd. I've seen the images of the Apple data center. What, Apple's own IT group, do you intend to do when your hundreds of racks of xserves hit end of life?

Any time someone proposes to me the benefits of running a windows environment over apple, I've always touted your lower total cost of ownership, ease of maintaining an environment and overall power and performance of your server hardware.

Yet you provide us with a document showing the capabilities of the mac pro running OSX server over the xserve? So I'm expected to start expanding my server room to support 6 mac pro's per rack? So when my power supply fails on a mac pro that's running my open directory service, I'm expected to just deal with it instead of being able to rapidly pull the failed one and replace it. Costing downtime instead of continued business?

I am not an angry or upset easily person, but this news, well, it equates to being shot, then robbed, then shot again just for good measure.

To all of my fellow Apple enterprise admins, I know we are far and few between, but we have to find a way to continue what we love and enjoy. I'm open for any suggestions on how we move forward from here.

I can't explain how sad and angry I am about this. I suspect that this is the first nail in the coffin for not just the Mac enterprise market, but OS X Server itself.

I've been a loyal Apple fan for 15 years. I'm probably the only person I know who gets excited about something like launchd, and how such Mac-like ideas can improve the POSIX environment. But today I'm an IT administrator, and this move not only screws up my intended career path (trying to specialize in OS X IT), but also makes me seriously question my loyalty to Apple.

I'm not sure what else to say. Thanks a lot, Steve.

For the last 5 years, I introduced Macs into our corporate IT. I bent and stretched to point out, that critical services like storage could be run on XServes and XSAN with lower TCO, shorter downtimes and a much more versatile recovery strategy than with any other solution affordable to our budget.
Today, we grew from NO Mac at all to 80TB XSAN, dozens of XServe, MacPros/-Books/-Minis and iPhones. Thousands of PC/Windows machines are served their data by .. XServes .. numerous legacy services have been virtualized on .. XServes .. and only after that, people realized that using Macs for their daily work was also sexy.
So, as I see it, the success Apple has had within my company would not have been possible without a solid, rackmountable server solution.
I think Steve has shot himself in the foot here.
Big time.

Sad isn't the word.

This is just what the old IT hands always said--that Apple was unpredictable and could one day just abandon the business market.

Note the lack of warning; the lack of professional-level transition pathway; the lack of honest communication with customers. At least with the discontinuation of the Xserve RAID, there was an alternative already in place.

This is absolutely disgusting. At least I can be glad I hadn't gone ahead with wasting any more money on OS X training.

Yeah, I'm wondering if there's much point in finishing my ACSA now.

What a nightmare. Totally dumbfounded, disappointed, and angry. Like others have said, this really screws up existing businesses, careeers, etc. As a development/IT consultant, I have pushed a lot of Apple server hardware into places. This makes me and Apple look like total idiots. Businesses will never trust Apple again. I've seen so many software developers move to the Mac over the last five years, and would have expected to grow the Xserve interest. If it hasn't, it really makes you wonder how long the Mac itself is going to last in the wake of iOS hardware.

The mini is an idiotoc platform for a server, and having liced through life using desktop boxes for servers before the XServe existed, there's no way I'm going back to that. Now I'll be forced to Linux, and despite the cheap hardware, the massive cost in servicing and maintaining that DIY nonsense is going to be a real problem.

Nightmare. Nothing but a pure nightmare.

Like you all, I have been a strong proponent of the XServe line, and this is a big "FU" from Apple to its corporate clients. For years Apple has been visionary in its evolution of computer technology, but replacing the XServe with a Mac Pro is laughable, inadequate for corporate users, and a huge step backwards. It's like a 10 year step backwards as when Apple turned G4 towers into servers: http://bit.ly/b1Z631

I just got off the phone with Apple's business sales department and they are not happy either. They suggested to send our complaints to the apple feedback page:

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

"This is just what the old IT hands always said--that Apple was unpredictable and could one day just abandon the business market."

exactly what I was told as well... 😟

Another fine example of Apple's "Do what ever they want" attitude. Even with the mini "solution" that for our small business would work it looks like back to a Linux box from here on out. Very poor choice Mr. Jobs.

Is the Xserve line really that difficult to maintain for a company with nearly $50BN in the bank? It's not like we ask for much - just a speed bump every now and then is enough to keep us happy.

Yes. Keep the chassis. Update the procs every so often and build to order if it is too draining financially to have stock on hand. Wonder about the Apple Enterprise reps. Will they be donning festive iPad t-shirts now?
With PO's and legal departments I can wait 2 weeks for Apple to build my Xserve. Don't care if it is an Xserve either just offer OS X server on a 1-2U rack with redundant power.