Swapping Xraid

Can i just remove the cable and plug it in the new xserve and get it working as it was ?

That;s a highly subjective question... 🙂

One one level, yes, you can disconnect the XServe RAID from the PPC server, connect it to a fiber channel card in the Intel server and the disks will (should) mount.

ALl your data will be accessible.

Whether that constitutes '... working as it was' is a whole different issue. That depends on what data was on the drive and how you were utilizing it.

For example, if the PPC server was sharing the XServe RAID volumes (e.g. via AFP, NFS, SMB, etc.) then it won't automatically be re-shared when you connect to the Intel server - you'll need to configure the file sharing service on the Intel server to identify and publish the sharepoints.

Likewise, if the user's home directories are on the RAID, they won't automatically come available on the Intel server - you'll need to configure file sharing and (potentially) Open Directory to setup the network home directories.

Similarly for any other service - just having the disk/data attached in no way configures the corresponding service to use it - if your MySQL databases are on the RAID, attaching the RAID isn't going to make any difference to MySQL running on the Intel Server.

Now, the above may be obvious and expected, but the specific way you asked your question means I needed to be clear.