Apple has announced that it’s dropping the Xserve rackmounted server at the same time another announcemnet came that new Mc Pro server will take its place.The servers will still have “useful service” after the transition, Apple promised.Apple will accept orders for Xserve until January 31, 2011, and says it has no plans to develop future versions of the server.
Xserve was Apple’s only rackmounted server — a system that could be stacked in server room racks. The form factor allows administrators to easily sandwich significant amounts of hardware together in tight spaces (Virgina Tech relies on Xserve for its world-class System X supercomputer).
In its Xserve Transition Guidee, Apple recommends that users adopt its new Mac Pro Server configuration, or its Mac mini server. The Mac Pro server is slated to ship in a few weeks with a $2,999 base option that features a quad-core Intel Xeon processor and 8 gigabytes of RAM.
Apple moved the Xserve to Intel Xeon chips in November 2006 and had mostly been keeping it updated in sync with towers, but in the past year it has been slipping behind. The company has been gradually steering away from trying to provide an entire solution itself and has already phased out the Xserve RAID storage hub.
