Re: [Fed-Talk] Xserve discontinued?
Re: [Fed-Talk] Xserve discontinued?
- Subject: Re: [Fed-Talk] Xserve discontinued?
- From: Dave Schroeder <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2010 06:48:12 -0500
This is the message I sent to my campus partners:
All,
Today Apple has announced that it will be discontinuing the Xserve hardware on January 31, 2011.
• Apple will not be developing a future version of Xserve.
• Orders for Xserve will be accepted through January 31, 2011.
• Apple will honor all Xserve warranties and extended support programs.
• Transition options to deploy Mac OS X Server include the server versions of Mac Pro and Mac mini.
For additional information, see:
Xserve Transition Guide - November 2010
http://images.apple.com/xserve/pdf/L422277A_Xserve_Guide.pdf
Mac OS X Server has not been discontinued. Apple has been progressively moving in the direction of virtualization with its server software, and the only thing stopping Mac OS X Server from being virtualized in other virtualization products on non-Apple hardware, such as VMWare, at present is the license agreement.
Apple does have a significant investment in some Mac OS X Server offerings, such as Open Directory, Podcast Producer, and many departmental/SMB-scale server applications. I would expect the next version of Mac OS X Server (Lion) would allow broader virtualization options, taking away the Xserve dependency of some special OS features, though nothing has been announced at this time.
One option for continuing to run Mac OS X Server on Apple hardware beyond Xserve is Mac Pro, which can be rackmounted, albeit in 6 RU. Mac Pro is a good solution if you are considering moving to a virtualized Mac OS X Server environment on Apple hardware, while Mac mini is suitable for many light duty applications. See the above transition guide for workload and application guidance.
This certainly reaffirms Apple's focus for the last several years, as Apple has never considered itself an "enterprise" company. However, it has increased efforts in the enterprise user space, last month establishing an agreement with Unisys to operate more effectively in enterprise/government environments. If you have any questions about this announcement, please contact me.
Regards,
Dave Schroeder
University of Wisconsin-Madison
email@hidden
http://das.doit.wisc.edu
+1 608 265-4737 (Office)
+1 608 444-5672 (Mobile)
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