TCA OPINION MAC
Robert Peckham is a director of The Technology Channels Association.
CONTACT
robert.peckham@
tcauk.org
So long Apple Xserve and thanks for the memories
Robert Peckham takes a trip down memory lane as he recalls the early days of the “coolest-looking” 1U server around, before bidding it a fond farewell...
“Apple revealed the beautiful, functional and impressive Xserve, and has continued upgrading the design with successive
processors and internal technologies through to the current, very powerful Intel-based machines.”
I’D LIKE TObegin by stating it’s a great honour to now be writing this column under the newly formed partnership of the TCA and the venerable CompTIA. Keith Warburton’s column does an admirable job of explaining the reasons behind this merger and the huge benefits this partnership will now bring to the UK reseller channel, so I don’t need to cover these again, but trust me – this new co-operation is certainly a very good thing.
The huge array of information
resources, training services and professional accreditations that CompTIA already provides for the IT channel are of equal significance, importance and benefit to Apple and Mac resellers as they are to those in the PC and Windows channel. So for the next few months in this column I'll be reviewing, assessing and analysing many of these aspects of CompTIA’s range of accreditations and services from the specific viewpoint of the Mac reseller channel. But for this month, I’d like to write
my own short obituary for the soon-to- be-passing Apple Xserve, and with it the closing of the latest chapter in Apple’s repeated attempts to get established in the professional server hardware market. Apple’s first serious attempt at a
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professional server solution dates back to 1992 and its WGS series of Centris and Quadra-based hardware, which cleverly ran Mac OS 7 alongside A/UX, Apple’s original foray into the UNIX arena, which provided the server software technology of this system. And it really worked very well, until Apple decided to leave
behind its own server operating system in favour of IBM’s AIX variant when it launched the impressive-looking, but sadly less-than-impressive performing (and rather short-lived) Apple Network Server series of computers in the mid-1990s. When the first release of OS X in
1999 was actually the server version, over a year before the public beta version of OS X itself, Apple finally declared its commitment to producing a serious server solution. With the launch of OS X 10.2 in 2003, Apple revealed the beautiful, functional and very impressive Xserve, and has continued upgrading the design with successive processors and internal technologies through to the current, very powerful Intel-based machines. I have to admit, I love the Xserve; it
is still the coolest-looking 1U server out there, and the functionality is unequalled, mainly thanks to the superb OS X Server software. But OS X Server has always run
perfectly well on pretty well any Mac hardware, notably the Mac mini, and the server version of this now remains as Apple’s only dedicated hardware server solution. So, goodbye Xserve, it’s been a great ride while it lasted. You’ll be sadly missed.
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December PCR 101
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