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by mschuster91 3136 days ago
> Apple's Xserve cluster was an interesting experiment but it never really went anywhere.

A pity Apple does not manufacture real servers any more. With the old cheesegrater-mac-pros, which were the last thing available after the Xserve death, you at least have the option to put in 4 disks and do a RAID setup, but no remote power/console management or a serial port...
1 comments
astrodust 3135 days ago
They've acknowledged the "trash can" design was a mis-step and they're working to correct it, so there's that.

Competing in the server market was very difficult for Apple, their needs are often radically different from consumer or even "pro"-consumer. They realized the couldn't "win" at servers, so backing out was the best bet for them.

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mschuster91 3135 days ago
> They realized the couldn't "win" at servers, so backing out was the best bet for them.

The need for servers is there, or otherwise the "macOS Server" would not be in the App Store. It actually is really nice, it provides everything needed for a business: LDAP, file server, mail, calendar, webserver, TimeMachine centralized, print server, ... - but how am I supposed to recommend this to a customer when Apple does not have any kind of HA ensurance (dual power supply, remote management, auto power on after AC loss, proper SNMP support, Wake On LAN), a way to attach more than 4 disks (or a real RAID, not a software one like CoreStorage does, and they cut out RAID management of diskutil anyway) or actually hardware that I can mount in a rack without wasting immense amounts of (expensive) space?

For the small-business scale, Microsoft actually has the SBS Server licenses, which are not tied to any specific vendor and are exactly the same tools used at big companies so a company can hire any competent consultant/admin for management.

Hell, they could simply ask Dell, HP or whomever to sell a specific server as "macOS Server compatible", charge a bit of money for the OS and that's it - people would rush to buy it, and if only to run a CI/CD environment for mobile app building without having to run it on non-DC-grade hardware!

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astrodust 3134 days ago
There's still a market, but Apple's not interested in being a bit player in it. HP, Dell, and SuperMicro utterly own the server space. Taking those companies head-on with a single one-size-fits-all server is never going to work, and Apple wasn't prepared to build out a complete server line.

The "Server" software they have is for small businesses and is pretty good for 10-20 users, but beyond that you'd probably use Google Apps, Microsoft Exchange or something more serious. It's a nice thing to have, but it can't compete at an enterprise level.

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