I Bought the Last One Apple Ever Made...

[James]

Apple used to make servers. For real. What were was the XServe like? What could it do? Why has the Mac Server gone the way of the iPod Touch?

 

 

 

[finkn]

Once again linus is wrong.

You could use drives without Apple approved Firmware.

 

Apple's own connector for the hard disk caddies (while annoying) was similar to the proprietary connector used by HPe in their MSA, and had a "sturdier" and more robust connection than the pure SAS or SATA, since the servers were used in many places as media centers for video and film production and the Disks were often transported umpteen times from server to server or location to location and thus went through countless plugging and unplugging cycles.

 

The Raidcard had a battery, it was mostlikely removed because it failed after all this time, plus it is hidden from view.

[ToboRobot]

Not pretty?  I thought racks of XServe and XServe RAID at work looked a lot nicer than the Dell and HP servers.

 

Edit:

An update or video on Mac Address looking at the history of these would be great.

 

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

Not pretty?  I thought racks of XServe and XServe RAID at work looked a lot nicer than the Dell and HP servers.

depends if you get the decorative front panel for dell or HP servers - they're an optional add-on because options.

[haifisch]

Its such a cool product I wish they kept selling them. If anyone is interested I actually have one lying around with its original packaging and accessories in good working condition that I am willing to sell if anyone is interested. Its configured with 2x Xeon X5570 24GB(12x 2GB) DDR3 ECC 3x 1TB RE3 WD1002FBYS HDDs 2x 750W PSU running Mac OS X Server v10.6. The disks are in good status according to SMART but the battery in the RAID controller is dead. If you are interested just hit me up but its located in Europe.

[GodAtum]

I've started a new job where my boss has asked me to transition from these servers to modern hardware. We currently run a these for users and groups, our intranet, mail and chat. Please help!

[eugine]

in the intro i didnt see any saver location in africa why, where i worked as asecurity guard we hard 2 mac servers come ooooon.

[BondiBlue]

One thing I noticed in this video is that the part about making a bootable installer for El Capitan was completely wrong. You don't run the installer on the newer Mac in order to make a bootable USB drive, and since the newer Mac was too new to run an old version of OS X of course it wouldn't let you install it. 

 

What was shown and said in the video was basically the equivalent of trying to make a Windows installer by running the Windows Setup executable and installing the OS on a separate computer. Apple even has documentation online for making a bootable USB installer, and all you have to do is use Terminal.app and a simple command that's built into macOS. Run that on the computer that's already working and you'll have an installer for El Capitan ready to go. 

[Uttamattamakin]

Those look like they were probably a very good product that I wish they had right now.  Immagine if Apple made a really good home server.  Can kind of do with a Mac Mini but I mean specifically with a couple of drive days basically the ultimate Apple NAS.  A local Apple centric cloud on premises.

 

My hypothesis about why they stopped selling not only this but a lot of education focused things:

 

What happened in my opinion is Apple's long term policy of selling particularly to education basically ended.  Back in like the eighties and the nineties they figured the kids hooked rather young.  Well they did and now those kids are buying decision makers and don't adults who love their apple products.

 

Now they don't need to pretend anymore and just keep making iterations of the same thing.  Just you know change it a little bit so people will know that you have the uncool older version.  At least that's what it felt like to me until the ARM switch. 

[GCBeee]

The drive connector looks very similar to the SCSI Ultra 3/Ultra 320 connector. Most likely a 36 pin version. I believe some form of it was used in a few PowerEdge servers (around the 1650/1750/1850 era).

[eithel]

I still have a copy of the latest macOS Server 5.12.2 released 10 months ago if you want to work on getting it on the computer.

[Crunchy Dragon]

58 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Those look like they were probably a very good product that I wish they had right now.  Immagine if Apple made a really good home server.  Can kind of do with a Mac Mini but I mean specifically with a couple of drive days basically the ultimate Apple NAS. 

Sounds like a Mac Pro but way smaller. I could get behind that idea, honestly.

[Uttamattamakin]

9 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Sounds like a Mac Pro but way smaller. I could get behind that idea, honestly.

Apple just needs to give us a box with a couple of PCIEx16's and some drive bays.  Why is that so hard for them?  

Instead now I've seen videos about people rackmounting Mac Mini's and even the trashcan mac pro. 

[Radium_Angel]

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Why is that so hard for them?  

Probably not hard, but I'm sure they have their reasons, and those reasons are probably green with large numbers

[TannerMcCoolman]

3 hours ago, BondiBlue said:

One thing I noticed in this video is that the part about making a bootable installer for El Capitan was completely wrong. You don't run the installer on the newer Mac in order to make a bootable USB drive, and since the newer Mac was too new to run an old version of OS X of course it wouldn't let you install it. 

 

What was shown and said in the video was basically the equivalent of trying to make a Windows installer by running the Windows Setup executable and installing the OS on a separate computer. Apple even has documentation online for making a bootable USB installer, and all you have to do is use Terminal.app and a simple command that's built into macOS. Run that on the computer that's already working and you'll have an installer for El Capitan ready to go. 

Yup, tried the createinstallmedia method and it did not work. Tivy and I easily spent a full day trying to get El Cap to install directly. Gathering footage that day was slightly more on the backburner than I prefer, due in no small part to attempt after attempt failing, coupled with the XServe's minidp refusing to capture with any combination of hdmi converter and capture card. As a result, I think the exact story of how it all happened got a tad bit muddled.

[Uttamattamakin]

1 hour ago, Radium_Angel said:

Probably not hard, but I'm sure they have their reasons, and those reasons are probably green with large numbers

That and of course the courage to be different.  If they ever give us a box with slots and or drive bays they'll courageously use their own proprietary standard (as they did back in the days pre intel.  Anyone remember their "processor direct slots"?)  IDK it just feels like a missed opportunity to not provide a home NAS solution for the Apple ecosystem.  Lots of people would buy that if they made it.   

[singularity093]

AFAIK Apples xserve machines even were PowerPC architecture - would be interesting to mention and tell the differences... also I heard they stopped the 19" rackservers because of bad performance with the Intel CPUs and so they began to develop their own.

[AndreiArgeanu]

You should roll into the apple store with one of these servers

[Radium_Angel]

6 hours ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

You should roll into the apple store with one of these servers

While the chaos would be amusing (like driving a DeTomaso Pantera into a Ford dealership for service [the Pantera uses a Ford 351 Cleveland engine]) the Apple employees wouldn't blink, they'd just say "we don't work on that" and try to sell you their latest overpriced iToy.

[ToboRobot]

10 hours ago, singularity093 said:

AFAIK Apples xserve machines even were PowerPC architecture - would be interesting to mention and tell the differences... also I heard they stopped the 19" rackservers because of bad performance with the Intel CPUs and so they began to develop their own.

Yeah, the first gen had PPC G4 1Ghz Chips

[Needfuldoer]

11 hours ago, singularity093 said:

AFAIK Apples xserve machines even were PowerPC architecture - would be interesting to mention and tell the differences... also I heard they stopped the 19" rackservers because of bad performance with the Intel CPUs and so they began to develop their own.

The Intel XServes were basically the same as the Dell, HP, and SuperMicro 1U servers built around the same architecture, and they were discontinued long before Apple Silicon debuted.

[Wacoon]

19 hours ago, James said:

Apple used to make servers. For real. What were was the XServe like? What could it do? Why has the Mac Server gone the way of the iPod Touch?

 

 

 

I have OS X Server 3.0.1 on my HD if you are interested.

[Needfuldoer]

One thing about installing old versions of MacOS on old Macs - You can get "unknown" errors when you go through the installers (especially from Internet Recovery) if the system time is set past the expiration date of the security certificates built into the installers.

[Shin-Gouki]

This takes me back to my days in the Godaddy Datacenters when we had some of these Apple Servers and how I hated working on them

[gethy154]

i have a 2006 Xserve and a 2009 Xserve both working if i can help at all