Why Apple axed Xserve, and how it can reenter the sever market - Page 3

Yep, Apple really missed the opportunity to buy Sun. OS X Server could be running on one if these right now:
Sun Fire x4170

Sun also had the support infrastructure in place along with solid engineering. They only lacked marketing. It would have been amazing to see it happen. Now their tech is slowly being torn apart at Oracle. It's a shame.

I work at a small liberal arts college with a mixed IT environment. We have three Xserve's and while we have many more Windows based servers (a choice made before my time), the Xserve's manage our 200+ Mac's. They also represent a better deal because we don't have to pay for CAL's. If you use the Xserve or are concerned about the future of Mac OS X Server please let Apple know:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/bringbackxserve/

Please read, sign if you agree, and forward the URL to other concerned parties. Be sure to look at the other petition's as well. Thanks!

I think it's more effecting signing this petition: http://www.savethexserve.com/ due the amount of signatures (almost 3,000 and growing) already it will grab more attention.

Spread the word on various forums.

The one petition links to the other, I encourage anybody to sign as many as they feel like! Let's let Apple know how this is going to hurt them and hurt us!

You people are wanting non-Xserve buyers to sign a petition to keep Apple from canning an area of their business that isnt making money. Is that accurate?

How about showing Apple that you actually want to keep buying Xserves in a way that matters to Apple? Why dont all of you that want Xserves to stay actually go buy some, because low sales are what put the Xserve in the position it is now. I think 1 million units should do it.

You obviously don't understand how the enterprise works. Without a credible 1U rackmount server to support and manage Mac workstations it will be really hard to convince IT or upper management to adopt or purchase large amounts of Mac's.

Video production houses that deploy XSAN, Final Cut Server, Quicktime server and other Apple only tech cannot really on non-server systems like the Mac Pro and Mac Mini.

Xserves are also used in Education for lecture capture with podcast producer, iTunes u and video systems along with management.

As an example I've been working on a 3 year plan for deploying many of the above and have worked hard to get past business polictics to the point of finally gaining support to go ahead with the project that would involve a lot of Xserve hardware purchases but now Apple pulls this. Now I'll have to scrap the plans and all the work was for nothing.

You guys really dont know how business works, including the enterprise, if you think an online petition over actual sales will affect Apples decision to keep an unprofitable part of their business intact.

Many of us who are worried own Xserve's and use Mac OS X Server in other situations as well. Here's the thing, servers are a long term investment, they last a long time...their built to. The college I work for has three Xserv's (we're small) and only one is up for refresh that the is only because it's 4 years old...other then that it's in great shape.

I would guess many of us don't need Xserve's right now but need to know they can get them (or something like it) when the need arises. We will replace most of our current Mac clients at least once before all of our current Xserv's need to be replaced...that said all these Mac's (and the new ones) need the servers to work optimally.

On a side note: Apple products are built to last...I have a friend who still has a Quadra 950 that I believe is still chugging along...it's obsolete but not worn out.

I understand your plight and its unfortunate that you and others will suffer from Xserve sales being so low, but that is business and a petition will not change that.

The purpose of the petition is to bring to Apple's attention the fact that many are not happy with the discontinuation of the Xserve, that many depend on it, that the lack of an Xserve will make it difficult to justify the purchase of large amounts of Mac desktops (which in turn does effect Apple's sales), that Apple needs to provide a suitable replacement (whether that's a new Xserve or allowing Mac OS X server to run on thrid party hardware, i.e Sunfire x4170), and that the particular manner in which they cancelled the Xserve was irresponsible on their part.

Apple is in a situation where they are creating bad PR and that will have a negative impact with their customers.

They keep making the ATV. How profitable is that? Maybe that's changed since the new model came out but the Steve's hobby has never been hugely profitable yet they continue with it. X-Serves are a good loss leader because they basically only exist to serve Mac clients. The iTunes store has historically not been a big profit center yet they have managed to keep it around too. Because it drives sales of iPods. X-serves drive sales of Macs. What that number is I don't know but I doubt its insignificant.

The really scary part is that an Apple engineer tried re-affiming Apple's commitment to servers and OSX server and had his blog post removed. Link. Sure the online petition is unlikely to change Apple's mind but what else can xserve users do? People who use OSX Server and x-serves are among the most loyal customers Apple has. We've completely bought into the Apple platform. Many of us use Macs at home and at work.

People that always complain about online petitions kind of make me sick...I mean they're the kind of people that would probably tell their kids that DisneyWorld is overrated and never take them.

Anyway...The first thing that comes to mind is for me is "Why didn't Apple buy Oracle after Oracle bought Sun again?" To me this is an important thing to keep reconsidering into the future as long as it remains true. Apple wanted to update their file system and they were poised to use ZFS. ZFS fell through on the licensing cost front, but Apple loves the tech. Apple has a robust investment in deploying online services without any legitimate robust server systems. Apple acquired PA-SEMI to design chips for their consumer products, but PA-SEMI had a very good business going selling custom chips for networked storage that was gaining massive ground on alternate solutions because of their unique performance...a PA-SEMI storage array solution would probably still best of class today. The number of Pro apps that Apple develops first party and /or third party apps within the entertainment space and now the CAD space that could benefit greatly from a single server based data asset management system has tripled in the last 5 years. By acquiring Oracle/Sun (which would be pennies for Apple) Apple would fill in holes for themselves, for their Pro customers and for potential enterprise "Sub-Clouds." Apple could easily virtualize every other OS while maintaining the stability they need for OS X on Apple hardware, but it also means they need to eliminate a significant amount of their mark-up to compete.

Apple never got serious about developing server hardware with one model and basically server software crow barred into desktop enclosures. While they have been able to forge ahead continuing to rely on third party hardware/software for Apple's increasingly popular networked services (primarily iOS apps and music) will eventually cost them through the nose.

Virtualizing Mac OS X in Solaris running on SPARC doesn't create a huge problem for Apple. Virtualizing it on Intel hardware for Dell, HP etc. on the other hand would be a HUGE problem, essentially because it would eliminate the EFI and other hardware matching barriers for the hordes of Hackintoshers out there and it would erode Apple's hardware sales. Apple worked extremely hard to keep Parallels and VMWare Fusion from Virtualizing OS X on Windows or Linux, so it wouldn't make sense for them to the back door with a Server solution.

DisneyWorld is overrated and I would never take my kids there. And I don't have an opinion one way or the other regarding online petitions.

This just seems simple, don't bother licensing it out to Dell/Hp/Etc, just sell it for VMWare only! No need to ever deal with hardware again... Apple will just push for the end of non-vm'd server hardware. Just like the end of the floppy disk.

Why do I like XServes and have bought them? Mainly I like having ONE OS I have to know inside and out and keep up with as well as I like OS X Server tools. XServes also had LOM which the Mac Pros didn't and I've had to use a few times over the past few years.

I'll be keeping my XServe. What we're doing is diversifying our server so that services that start to outgrow the main server move to hosted solutions (which means I don't have to manage them anyway), but core stuff stays on our server.

Rehash of this article?

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/1...rver-strategy/

We had bought an Xserve for our small business to support about a dozen Macs. It was a pain to set up and maintain and never gave the full collaborative experience that Apple had suggested it provided. When Apple discontinued the product, we gave up on Apple and Macs altogether.

Businesses need decent, easy-to-set-up server solutions that are guaranteed to be supported in the long term. Apple is running after the consumer and sole proprietor markets, and that's all their products are really good for.

A pain to setup? Really? I really find that hard to believe!

Setting up collaboration is easy. File sharing, Calendar and Mail services etc... are a breeze to configure often only requiring a few clicks. Maintanence wise, you can automate software updates or install them remotely either with Apple Remote Desktop or via the terminal.

Did you even bother to read the manual?

The XServe is still up on Apple's store site. Same tag. Discontinued Dec 31, 2010

If OSX Server were licensed for Dell, etc, wouldn't that make it easy to install on any Intel machine?

that would really depend on how portable the OS X/darwin code was. But with out a recompile, you are talking about emulation, not virtualization.



I think that there is a perceived barrier here that doesn't exist. I am running OS X server in a VirtualBox vm on top of OpenSolaris. And on Apple hardware. EFI is not anything magic. From a high level, it is the next step in the PC bios. And why (I believe) that I am meeting Apple's EULA request, there are plenty of hackintoshes out there that load up OS X just fine, assuming the end user purchases the correct hardware.


I am not convinced that Apple is working at all to keep any VM manufacturer from virtualizing OS X, aside from the EULA. VirtualBox advertises the ability to virtualize OS X up front, and I just saw an announcement for VMWare ESXi 5.0 that advertises OS X virtualization.

Are you seeing something I am missing?

don't lic# any mac away
use the mac mini as the raid type server

i think




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