No more Xserve

[jarednichols]

Get 'em while you can folks.

http://www.apple.com/xserve/resources.html

This has to be one of the stupidest decisions Apple has ever ever made. Our rep has been "Oh yeah, Apple's serious about Enterprise." Bull. This proves it. Even the PDF document on why you should get off your Xserve misses the point. It exudes that the Mac Pro is more powerful. Fine. Where's the redundant power supply? Where's the Lights Out Management? Where's the quick to replace components? Don't know if you've ever done a Main Logic Board on a Mac Pro before, but it's not pretty. It's a 30 minute job with nary a screwdriver on an Xserve.

How are people going with running the JSS on Linux these days? I'm all for doing that and hopping to a Dell server box if it's reliable. Hey Apple, can you relax the server OS so that I can run it virtualized on real iron? Like ESX?

Thanks

j
--
Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

[ernstcs]

Now that's exciting…

Ubuntu for JSS perhaps. ;)

[noah_swanson]

Whats next. All Macs with iOS?

How is one supposed to rack-mount a MacPro that will please the server team ;-)

[#4]

Cut the handles ;)

De : Swanson Noah <SwansonNoah at JohnDeere.com>
Date : Fri, 5 Nov 2010 07:28:06 -0500
À : Casper List <casper at list.jamfsoftware.com>
Objet : Re: [Casper] No more Xserve

Whats next. All Macs with iOS?

How is one supposed to rack-mount a MacPro that will please the server team
;-)

[jhenkel]

Thats really bad news. The question is - will there be an Mac OS X Server in the future?

Joe

[#6]

10.7 server for sure, let's hope for an announcement to hear a little bit
more about the features.

--

Francois Tiffreau | IT operations Manager

ESL Education
Head office ­ Switzerland
Grand-Rue 50, 1820 Montreux
t +41 21 962 88 80 | f +41 21 962 88 81
skype esl.francois

http://www.esl-education.org <http://www.esl-education.org/>

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De : Johannes Henkel <jhenkel at hsd.de>
Date : Fri, 5 Nov 2010 13:51:41 +0100
À : Casper List <casper at list.jamfsoftware.com>
Objet : Re: [Casper] No more Xserve

Thats really bad news. The question is - will there be an Mac OS X Server in
the future?

Joe

[noah_swanson]

But it's the hardware they dropped not the software. I'm sure all of you are caught off guard as well.

[bentoms]

we're just awaiting approval for new xserves too…

Regards,
Ben Toms
IT Support Analyst GREY Group
The Johnson Building, 77 Hatton Garden, London, EC1N 8JS
T: +44 (0) 20-3037-3819 |
Main: +44 (0) 20 3037 3000 | IT Helpdesk: +44 (0) 20 3037 3883

[ktrampe]

I'm hoping for an integrated virtualization feature in Lion... :)

Sad to see the Xserve go. The Mac Pro and Mini do not support LOM.

Cheers,
Kerry

[dkucmierz]

We are moving to cluster the JSS with 3 dell r610s I ordered running Red hat and using the xserve it's on now just for mysql. Should be up and going at the end of the month.

--

David Kucmierz
Mesquite ISD Technical Services
972.882.5506

[jarednichols]

I'd be incredibly interested to hear of your trials and tribulations.

j
-- Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

[jarednichols]

"Integrated virtualization" sounds awful close to an enterprise feature… Wouldn't want to sneak that in or anything…
--
Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

[stevewood]

So glad they could make this announcement today, the day my 2011 budgets are
due. Thanks Apple....guess I'm going to have to go back to the drawing
board and look at an HP server running ExtremeZ-IP.

I'll be eagerly listening to what this group finds out for JSS alternatives,
and what JAMF has in mind for an alternative (hint, hint).

Steve Wood
Director of IT
swood at integer.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6901 | C 940.312.2475

[dderusha]

We run our JSS on a tower and it works fine. Distribution points are the new mini servers. They aren't discontinuing the server OS are they? Towers are not friendly to rack, and a pain if the logic board dies but not the end of the world.

Dan

[jarednichols]

No, not the end of the world, but with our #1 requirement being redundancy and reliability, this presents us with no options.

j
--
Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

[#16]

Hi
I was about to get a new Xserver (my old one runs out of warranty in december) for the JSS, but know I have to decide what to do I will wait and see if JAMFSoftware comes with an easy how to setup your JSS on a Linux

best
C.

[dderusha]

agreed.

we also have 4 xserves not a room full of thousands in a cluster.

Dan

[stevewood]

Same here. The projects I had lined up for next year were an XSan
deployment and a deployment of CrashPlan Pro, both of which were going to
require a few XServes. Now, I'm not sure what I'll do. Perhaps try to get
my XServes in January for the XSan deployment, and run CPP on a Windows box
instead. Oi vey!

Steve Wood
Director of IT
swood at integer.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6901 | C 940.312.2475

[noah_swanson]

Now there's a MacProServer....little bit different configuration but still the Desktop Form Factor...

http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/05/mac-pro-server-quietly-introduced-as-xserve-heads-for-the-grave/
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro?mco=MTg5MTY5NDQ

[#20]

Been running my JSS on a Mac Mini server since the beginning with no
problems. Utter idiocy to discontinue the xServe form factor. Maybe they
should try and squish the Mac Pro down to size! I just bought 3 new
xserves over the summer with a special 4 year Apple care package, I am not
crying right now. Maybe in 4 years, I will retire and not have to worry
about this. My only fear is that Lion Server might not run well on my
xserves. Let's hope that is not the case.

Roy

[donmontalvo]

Hi Ben,

Personally, this is great news! Datacenter folks hate (HATE) Apple hardware and don't support it. So we're always finding ourselves in a compromised position. We've been migrating services to Wintel for years (QLA, UTS, etc.) and Linux (FullPress/WebNative, MassTransit, Hilios, etc.).

The only things holding us back from total abandonment of Mac OS X Server has been (1) NetBoot and (2) Apple Software Update Server...and more recently (3) JAMF Software Update Server which is still not totally supported on Wintel/Linux (not without additional special services fees).

Apple stuck it to us a few years ago. We had just bought and deployed close to a dozen Xserve RAID boxes. I'm hoping Apple is just ramping up to release new server hardware, but I'm not holding my breath.

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on, shame on you. Fool me, you can’t get fooled again.” —President George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

Don (who knows GWB is in Dallas this week; can hear the drones circling over our LAB...)

[donmontalvo]

For what it's worth, ExtremeZ-IP on a decent Wintel server box blows away the newest/fastest/best Apple Xserve. Hands down.

There's not one environment that had Apple Xserve deployed for file services that we didn't move over to Wintel with ExtremeZ-IP.

In every single migration, performance and stability went up, and costs went down. Datacenter folks like it too.

Don

[ernstcs]

I've been reading the comments on AppleInsider's thread about it, and some are always so funny, but one of them caught my attention…Apple's server farm. They'll be offering application hosting no doubt, but that's not necessarily helping anyone here if they are concerned about fast file servers for imaging, so for a small distribution point a mini MAY be fine for some depending upon their size, but those with big JSS installs a mini…yeah right. I wouldn't even use a mini…

They have GOT to be planning something with 10.7 Server and some other server hardware or letting virtualization out to other hardware. It just doesn't make sense.

Should be interesting coming up.

Craig E

[donmontalvo]

If Apple loosens their Mac OS X Server EULA and lets us VM it on Wintel hardware, we'd be in a good position. Then we can (finally) get the servers into our Datacenters.

Don

[CasperSally]

We keep hoping JAMF will move towards a supported Linux VM environment install. What's stopped us so far investigating this further is trouble doing JAMF software upgrades without a support number to call.

When we tested KBox, in some areas they are years behind JAMF for deployment and packaging OSX, but the initial server install was given to us for testing via a linux VM that we had up and running in minutes on our farm. They even have their own netboot solution - no OSX servers needed at all for anything.

There must be some 10.7 solution coming, for netboot alone I'd guess.

[noah_swanson]

I suppose it wont be long before someone creates some sort of "case mod" for taking a MacPro to the server form factor. Although it will most likely be 3-4 slots high since the heatsinks on those things are massive.

Still missing a lot of the features of the xserv though...

[John_Wetter]

This is what I half-heartedly joked about this morning. Besides the abandonment of a real enterprise piece of equipment, I joked that "Well, someone messed up as I'm sure the virtualization announcement was supposed to happen today too."

If supported, I'd see us throwing OS X VM's in our ESXi infrastructure.

It's just kind of silly to think Apple is telling us with a straight face to use a mac mini or a tower computer (MacPro) in our datacenter in the rack next to a blade chasis and EMC storage arrays in an ESXi environment set up for enterprise-class computing... Riiiiiight.... Our JSS is a mission critical piece of software for us as our processes are closely tied to it. We've invested in Enterprise-class hardware to make that happen but now we're being told it isn't an option in the future.

For larger districts like us, K-12 is an enterprise environment, we don't have the luxury of down-time anymore which seems to be lost on some, both in Apple and in education itself. For us at least, the days of "This is going to be down for a while until we fix it." or "It went down over the weekend but that's okay because it's the weekend." are long gone.

I like to hear that JAMF is testing against other platforms as that sure seems to be where many of us with larger environments are going to have to go at some point here.

John

--
John Wetter
Technical Services Manager
Educational Technology, Media & Information Services
Hopkins Public Schools

[#28]

Should be more from Apple after Monday (they are having an enterprise sales
meeting) ­ hopefully that will provide clarity.

[hasaanh]

I concur we have over 200 Xserves in our district, 80+ of which were
purchased in the last 6 months to accommodate Casper distribution points.
-- Hasaan Herrington
Technical Support II
Information Technology
Anchorage School District
1602 Hillcrest Drive, Anchorage, Alaska, 99517

[Cem]

I think Virtual Server/s or JSS running directly from a Linux or Win
server box will ease my and data centre guys' job.

First off all, I don't have to worry about backing the server up as data
centre infrastructure will do this automatically. Second, I don't have to
freakout about hardware failure as these guys are trained for the hardware
and they have the greatest monitoring systems.

I really want to see JAMF Software to give us an Enterprise Level High
Availability/ Resilience to their great product. So I think this change
will make it happen quicker :)

It will be interesting to see future NetBoot and SUS solutions though...

Cem

[martin]

Hi Cem,

They only stop making Xserve's not Mac OS X Server. Maybe Apple will change the license and let's run Mac OS X Server on VMware ESX(i).

Kind Regards,

Martin van Diemen

t +31 (0)205677744

---

G-Star International B.V.
www.g-star.com

[Cem]

Yep I am aware of that...that is why I have mentioned Virtual Server/s (I
meant Virtual Mac OS X Server/s)
Thanks for highlighting it though.

[#33]

I've got JSS running on a testbed Debian box already. I've also been reading up on netboot via Linux and am going to start testing on Monday.

As for SUS, well... it can't be impossible. But, worst case scenario, we'll keep a Mac Pro around for SUS services pointed to share space on bigger iron.

OD is going to be interesting as well. Fortunately, there are options and I'll have some time to begin testing there as well.

Hopefully, though, this is all going to be moot when (please be when, not if) Apple opens licensing for OS X Server VM's on vanilla hardware. In the meantime, I'm making a recommendation for migrating as much as possible off our existing Xserves and will not be advising replacement orders before January.

And I must admit that I'm very disappointed in the information we get from our sales and technical contacts from Apple. I know they get their jollies on secrecy, but they take it too far when it comes to enterprise support.

thom

[kalikkalik]

Doesn't anymore remember what happened with the Xserve RAID?

Apple didn't want to invest any more money, so they qualified an external vendor....

-j

[#35]

Sorry, I doubt that's the case. Had they announced prior to discontinuing or, at the very least, in the same breath, okay.

Besides, when a company that is sitting on a cool $50 billion in liquid doesn't want to invest in providing backend infrastructure to maintain their products and decides to announce that fact without forewarning or notice to those that support them... well, I'm being asked now to justify why we should consider keeping 1000 odd computers in rotation without enterprise tools from the manufacturer.

Not sure I can. I'm on the phone with our Apple cat this morning. I really need to hear relaxed EULA on OS X Server for vanilla hardware/virtualization, because people above me are telling me that's what they want to hear.

Macs make up less than a tenth of our population, upper management will let them go. Period.

[tlarkin]

They are still making servers, just not rack mount ones. The Xserve is now in the Mac Pro case. I don't like this transition but there are some people at Apple that do not view Apple as an enterprise company, which is sad.

http://www.custom-consoles.com/Mac_Pro_Rack.php

They already make these, which are like shelving for your huge mac pro desktop cases.

[jarednichols]

The MacPro is definitely not an Xserve in MacPro clothing. Redundant power supplies is the biggest thing missing if you ask me.
--
Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

[#38]

Not to beat a dead horse, but without LOM, redundant power supplies and hot swappable bays, no... they're simply installing a server OS on consumer hardware.

There is no way I can drag a tower into the server room -- I've already been told that will not happen.

I'm pretty sure Apple just told my school district they don't want our business and that we can plan on refreshing our thousand Macs with Dells when they hit EOL.

[tlarkin]

OK, touché on the redundant power supplies. Though I think that the
Mac pro could easily support LOM if you added a NIC to it. Not sure on
that though.

[kalikkalik]

On Nov 8, 2010, at 8:45 AM, Thom Burrell wrote: Sorry, I doubt that's the case. Had they announced prior to discontinuing or, at the very least, in the same breath, okay.

Good point

Besides, when a company that is sitting on a cool $50 billion in liquid doesn't want to invest in providing backend infrastructure to maintain their products and decides to announce that fact without forewarning or notice to those that support them... well, I'm being asked now to justify why we should consider keeping 1000 odd computers in rotation without enterprise tools from the manufacturer.

Apple has repeatedly stated that they are not an enterprise company...

Not sure I can. I'm on the phone with our Apple cat this morning. I really need to hear relaxed EULA on OS X Server for vanilla hardware/virtualization, because people above me are telling me that's what they want to hear.

Most of us would like to hear that - not sure it will happen before 10.7 is announced, but hey...if they change the terms on 10.6 server...would be interesting.

Macs make up less than a tenth of our population, upper management will let them go. Period.

It happens - sometimes management decisions are based solely on form factor.

On Nov 8, 2010, at 7:36 AM, Jeremy Matthews wrote: Doesn't anymore remember what happened with the Xserve RAID? Apple didn't want to invest any more money, so they qualified an external vendor.... -j_______________________________________________ Casper mailing list Casper at list.jamfsoftware.com http://list.jamfsoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/casper