Apple Discontinues Xserve, Only Available Until January 31st | Hacker News Reader

Apple Discontinues Xserve, Only Available Until January 31st

macrumors.com

20 pointspietrofmaggi24 comments

Not what I'd call a shocker.

Was anybody actually using them? OS X is a wonderful single-user-facing operating system, whether that user is a clueless consumer or a Unix-loving developer. But there's nothing that sets it apart as a server system. Similarly, while the hardware's quite nice, there's nothing about it that makes it superior to alternatives.

But of course, people will inevitably spin this as proof that MacOSX is about to be locked down like iOS.

"Was anybody actually using them?"

My company uses it for a FileMaker server, not much more. Better than the busted PowerBook it ran on previously…

I recall going to a demo event 5 years ago or so and being pretty impressed some of the gui management tools (despite being a long time "ssh and command line is all you need" type of sysadmin). Unfortunately for Apple I guess the set of people who wanted to run their own Unix servers AND where willing to pay a premium for nice gui management tools was quite small.

The server version is still available; just not the rackmount.

They're not discontinuing OSX Server, just the rackmount hardware. I'm guessing the market for people that have outgrown a couple of decked out Mac Pros (seriously, those things are beasts) but still want OSX on their servers is pretty tiny. As a central server for smaller orgs though I'm guessing it's not doing badly.

There's also the Mac Mini! The missing piece is something more powerful than the Mini, but more efficient than the Pro.

The Mac Mini is highly underrated, btw. That may be neither here nor there, but it's an extremely versatile and relatively inexpensive solution to quite a few non-obvious use cases.

Just curious -- how are you using it?

- RAID 1 mirrored and/or RAID 0 striped

- DVR

- To do mega-project: car install as all-purpose media server/center (though I have read that there are kinks in this sort of setup, especially as concerns audio)

- Home security setup / server for video feed

I should disclose that I own more of these little buggers than is probably warranted or advisable.

I've been considering picking up one. I'd like to see a home security/automation thread. Can I ask what you have set up? I'm really interested in a rig that can log entry.

I took most of my initial cues from Alan Graham / BoingBoing, though I will freely admit that I haven't gone as far down the home automation rabbit hole as he has. I should also mention that he's now advocating iPads for home automation (I still prefer Minis for various reasons, especially storage capacity for things like video feed and logging).

Some of these links are practically ancient, but they're where I started, and they are good jumping-off points:

http://macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/02/13/home_automation...

http://boingboing.net/2010/06/24/ipad-home-automation.html

Let's be honest: the reason I don't go as far on home automation as he does is a) I'm not really interested in being a power user of some of the home auto features he advocates; b) I am too lazy/occupied to write a custom UI that would theoretically be foolproof enough for guests...let alone myself first thing in the morning before coffee. :)

Dislaimer 2: Alan is very much a kitchen-sink approach kind of guy (as is evident in the pics of his rather ungainly and uber-comprehensive UI), whereas I am a minimalist.

The Mac Mini is restrained by I/O, not CPU, when providing mail, print and file serving.

I think the missing piece is a Mac Mini with a Light Peak connection for external drives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Peak

A Mac Mini with 1-2-3 external drives connected using Light Peak will be more than sufficient for most small companies, and this will be much cheaper than an Xserve with the same amount of redundant disk space.

I think there's a lot of smaller shops out there using them, particularly graphic design and video shops. The newspapers I worked in always had at least one Xserve in the racks as well, one newsroom ran entirely on macs and mac servers.

One of my clients is a print-shop and they chose XServes to handle their internal network because they use Macs everywhere else.

They regarded it as a natural step with minimal retraining for their technical people (where technical means less technical than your average HN reader).

I guess they'll be coming to me to look after their next servers.

But of course, people will inevitably spin this as proof that MacOSX is about to be locked down like iOS.

I like Apple, but I don't think it's spin to see this as just another move towards Apple Electronics being only a consumer oriented company. The question is then what else will Apple consider not consumer oriented? MacPros? MBPs? Any device not running iOS?

Apples secrecy and the lack of any sort of roadmap only lead to more speculation and uncertainty.

XServes are really great pieces of kit actually - equal in terms of features vs cost to any other servers + the ability to run Mac OS X.

You need AFP servers because Samba share handling is so bad on Macs.

I wish they would also discontinue Mac OS X Server and just add all the management UI's into Mac OS X. As an optional install if necessary.

Folding OSX Server into OSX proper would be pretty awesome indeed.

It'd be pretty awesome if Windows Server 2008 was rolled into Windows 8.

Seriously though, Mac OS X Server has a ton of advanced valuable services (email, calendaring, booting clients off server based images, time machine server). I think it's totally cool for Apple to continue charging for it.

I wonder what Apple uses in their own datacenters then.. They're obviously not dogfooding anymore with all these datacenters they're supposedly rolling out.

Apple Releases New 'Server' Configuration of Mac Pro to Replace Xserve:

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/11/05/apple-releases-new-serve...

It'd be great to see an Xserve-inspired 1U kit that'd let you mount a couple of Mac minis side by side (or a 5U kit that let you mount a dozen Mac minis Xserve RAID style).

you prayers are answered: http://mk1manufacturing.com/www.mk1manufacturing.com/Compute...

That URL is really... something.

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