Xserve

Six 'Xserve' stories December 2010 - October 2014

Apple removes Mac mini server from sale, drops 2 TB storage option with new models

Mike Beasley Oct 16 2014 - 5:22 pm PT

With today’s updates to the Mac mini, Apple has made the decision to stop selling the “server” version of the computer. In doing so, the company has also lowered the maximum storage available in the machine from 2 TB to just 1 TB. The server model was also the first version of the Mac mini to forego the optical drive, though the change was soon carried over to the rest of the line.

The server model was created to supplant the Xserve, which was discontinued in 2010. It originally shipped with OS X Server preinstalled, but was later loaded instead with the consumer version of OS X. OS X Server was transitioned to the Mac App Store as a $19.99 purchase and the new Mac mini was moved to a more consumer-oriented setup.

If you’re looking to expand your Mac mini’s storage, you can always take advantage of those new Thunderbolt 2 ports.

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Enterprise Mac Storage vendor Active is closing up shop?

Seth Weintraub Jan 22 2013 - 5:23 pm PT

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According to a post over at Xsanity, Enterprise Mac Storage vendor Active is closing up shop. The details:

Founder and former Apple Xserve and Xserve RAID head Alex Grossman departed Active one month ago.
The shutdown appears to have happened very quickly. Only two weeks ago, Active trumpeted about their new mPath acceleration technology.
At this time there is no mention of the shutdown on their web site.
A member of the Active Field Engineering team has posted here “Most of us are actually okay and employed elsewhere already.”

We’ll update when/if we hear more about what’s happening including plans for current Active customers.

Thanks, Aaron!
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160 Mac minis crammed into custom 2′ x 2′ datacenter rack

Jordan Kahn Dec 10 2012 - 8:41 am PT

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Hackaday.com pointed us to this custom rack sporting 160 Mac Minis that was originally posted by Steve’s blog. There isn’t a whole lot of information about where exactly the rack is being used, but Steve said the goal was to replace Xserve by coming up “with a way to get the same or better CPU core density into a standard 2′ by 2′ datacenter rack.” The custom 160 Mac mini rack provided him with 640 cores—compared to his 40 Xserve setup at 320 cores per rack. However, there were many considerations to make, i.e., custom shelving, managing the exhaust of the minis, cooling, “Y” power cable splitters, etc., and Steve walked through the solution for each on his blog.

I have introduced these machines to the production environment, they run great… I had to add a 10Gb SFP+ Ethernet card to the XServe, and now I can NetBoot all 160 machines at the same time.. It works so well that all of the machines are back up and running within 45 seconds…. That’s fast for a NetBoot.. Here are some final pics of the cabinet.

Steve Jobs upgrades BluRay from ‘Bag of hurt’ to ‘Mafia’ and other rumors

Seth Weintraub Jan 3 2011 - 12:17 pm PT

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Hardmac reports today some of Steve Jobs’ latest thoughts on BluRay.

He admitted that retrospectively he feels ashamed that Apple’s name is associated to Blu-ray, as he thinks that BD supporting associations look today more like Mafia than anything else.

Jobs famously called BluRay a ‘Bag of Hurt’ during a Q&A after a MacBook Event in 2008.

Concerning authoring on Blu-ray, it seems impossible to provide software supporting such format for consumer market. In addition to DRM, here it is the cost of licenses that slow down the entire process; one would have to start paying 3,000 USD to AACS, then 80,000 USD to Sony, 40,000 USD to Sonic, etc.

Hardmac also reports that the next version of Final Cut Pro will come in March or April 2011, which is what we’ve seen in Jobs emails.

Finally, they say that not everyone is happy with the Xserve axing but they don’t know what comes next. We’ve heard some things.
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There is some OS X in Apple's NC Data Center

Mark Gurman Dec 14 2010 - 8:10 pm PT

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We’ve come across an interesting Apple job listing today noting the different operating systems which power Apple’s North Carolina data center. The most interesting system mentioned is Mac OS X. With Xserves on the way out is Apple really stacking the place up with Mac Pro/Mac Mini server machines? Not bloody likely!

Our data center environment consists of Mac OS X, IBM/AIX, Sun/Solaris, and Linux systems. Though this position is focused primarily on Red Hat Linux and Oracle Enterprise Linux, you should also understand SAN, RAID, file system, and IP networking technology.

So the question is: Is Mac OS X running on Macs (old Xserves?) or is it running virtualized on data center hardware? We’d heard some rumblings of such a virtualized Mac OSX running on vSphere a few months ago. Such a setup would make sense in this situation.

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Apple discontinues SSD option for Xserves

Mark Gurman Dec 13 2010 - 11:43 am PT

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We already know that Xserves will be officially discontinued come January 31st and today Apple already started the process. They’ve removed the SSD option from custom ordered Xserves. The option is still listed on Apple’s Xserve promotional literature, but is gone as a configurable option. A 9to5mac reader contacted Apple business representatives and they reportedly don’t know the reason for the change either.

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