Apple Retires the Xserve Line, Introduces Mac Pro Server
Apple out of the blue announced that its line of Xserve rack mounted servers will be discontinued as of January 31, 2011 and no plans are in place to develop it any longer. Apple has never been known to be a strong corporate and enterprise player and the Xserve line has been its sole attempt at entering that market while filling a product niche outside its traditional consumer space.
The Xserve since the PowerPC G5 days had been an iconic server in its own right having made the record books at one point as one of the fastest and most cost effective super computer grid under the name System X at Virginia Tech university. However it has never succeeded to break the enterprise market.
Those who have purchased Xserves will still have their units supported as per the standard and extended support agreements while service parts will remain available for seven years in California or five years everywhere else. Apple advises that from February 1, those looking for a server solution from Apple should take a look at the company’s Mac Pro and Mac mini Server products.
The Mac Pro had been increasingly using server-class hardware in recent times. This seems to have led, at least partially, to the decision to axe the specialized server product and introduce a Mac Pro based server.
Mere hours after announcing the end of the Xserve, Apple introduced the Mac Pro Server. This new variant of the Mac Pro comes with a quad-core 2.8GHz Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor with 8GB of RAM made up of four 2GB memory chips. It holds two 1 TB hard drives and carries an unlimited-client license of Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server.
This new unit which will began shipping in two to four weeks carries a price tag of $2999. Of course, as with any kind of Mac Pro, Apple provides all sorts of customizations through its Apple Online Store, including processor upgrades, additional memory, greater hard drive capacities, and a fiber channel card, all for those who can afford them.
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