“Apple decided last month to kill its Xserve line of rack servers, one of its rare pure-enterprise products,” Goldman reports. “What’s more, Apple gave its business customers just four months to adapt, notifying them through a ‘transition guide’ that it would no longer sell Xserves after Jan. 31, 2011.”
Goldman reports, “Xserve customers’ reaction was, unsurprisingly, a mix of confusion and frustration…. [However] Many Xserve customers say they’re sticking with the Macintosh platform for both desktop and servers. A survey of 1,200 Xserve customers conducted by the Enterprise Desktop Alliance found that 70% of Xserve customers say Apple’s announcement will have no impact on their organization’s decision to buy new Macs.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
Another way of saying this is, “30% of Xserve customers say Apple’s discontinuation will have an impact on decision to buy new Macs”
OMG. First POST! I’m gonna throw a party. Drinks on me!
@Wingsy
1st & 2nd!
Is second round on you as well?
Apparently no one but Wingsy cares about Xserves.
Of course discontinuing Xserve would not be a problem if Apple were licensing OS X Server to IBM, Sun, HP, and other makers of big iron while allowing Unisys to integrate it.
It’s also not such a big deal because you can buy a Mac mini with OS X Snow Leopard Server for $999.
It isn’t at all clear what those statistics mean. 70% will continue to buy Macs. But what for? For desktops, laptops and/or servers? Will they continue to buy Apple’s server solution, or will they go somewhere else?
The 2011 Apple Product Announcement season hasn’t even begun yet…… Something big is coming with Apple and Enterprise servers
What hardware did Apple put in their BILLION DOLLAR SERVER FARM? Is there a smaller form factor coming next year? The Mac mini server is a great option for small companies. But, there is something else that Apple would use in their server farm.
I’m with those who think Apple will have a 2011 announcement about OS X Server running on someone else’s hardware.
My money is on Sun. Sun was recently bought by Oracle, and Oracle CEO larry Ellison is BFF with SJ.
Xserves apparently weren’t selling enough to justify Apple continuing to make them.
Which begs the question, how many customers does this 1,200 survey sample actually represent? 70% of how many total Xserve customers? I didn’t see that number provided in the article itself.
You’d think this would be a crucial piece of data to include in the story, to provide the reader with an accurate context of just how meaningful that 70% really is.
@bizlaw
Yeah whats the deal… just hook the XRaid to a couple a USB ports….
Mac Mini server also is missing LOM. I wish every damn Mac Pro had this for as much as they cost. Would make my life as a Mac IT guy a lot easier.
The Dude abides.
having been in the IT field for about 20 years, there was something I learned:
if a product is crap and discontinued you have to replace it, but really good products continue to be useful and relevant long after they are discontinued.
how many of us are using old, discontinued macs without any problems or need to replace them?
Apple are apaprently sending reps out to all the large X-serve customers telling them to wait for an announcement regarding an upgrade strategy for the X-serve…
Maybe they are already building it, but have earmarked all the early production machines for their own server farm…
This fuss is all about form factor. The X-serves processor isn’t as powerful as a MP’s. $10 says OWC has case solution in a month. Big woop.
Year after year Apple has been shaving technical features off their products in favor of high profit, feature limited gadgets that center around the sale of their new cash-cows; Music, movies, iAds, and media sales. This latest cancellation is further proof they are a “consumer electronics company” now, not “Apple Computer” anymore. They’re just “milking the Mac users for all their worth” as Steve Jobs once said.
Of course! Apple will continue to support the no-profit OS X server on rival hardware …
… just keep telling yourself that.
For large enterprise Mac based organizations Xserves function as the brains that keep all the Macs running. Kill one Xserve and you potentially kill hundreds of Macs that rely on OS X Server services. Open Directory, AFP, DNS, Xsan MDCs for starters. Yes we can continue to use our current machines for a couple of years until Apple requires the latest hardware to run the latest OS. We have 50+ Xserves, our data center cannot expand enough to allow for MacPro replacements. Six Xserves occupy less than 11″ of a 7 ft rack. The MacPro equivalent consumes the entire rack.
@johnH
According to the numbers you provide, your 50+ Xserves now occupy 11*50/6 inches of rack space = 7.64+ feet of rack space, i.e., one full 7ft rack and an nearly empty rack (or the equivalent).
MacPros would occupy 50/11= 4.5+=5 racks.
Your server room must be really cramped not to accommodate an additional 3 19in racks. That’s less than the space occupied by an average desk.
This is not to say that the actual wiring of XServes isn’t a lot nicer than having to connect umpteen desktop machines. The greater ease of integration of the cluster is a more fundamental advantage to XServes.
On the other hand, it is harder to give a XServes a second life as client machines, than it is for Mac Pros (because you basically have to replace those large racks with more small racks)
Apple should make the next Mac Pro rack mountable with an adapter kit.
@vanfruniken
You can’t be serious
I think a more relevant question would be, with the xserve end of life, what server platform are you planning to transition to ?
If something big is coming, why did they decide to end of life. Why not just let the product run out of stock and then announce the next big thing.
Where is Lion Server ?