Whisky Tango Foxtrot.

Apple has announced that they are discontinuing the Xserve hardware platform.

I know that they’re selling a lot more Mac mini Servers, and that the Mac Pro is currently (in some aspects) a more powerful hardware platform, but… seriously? Killing the Xserve?

The options are now – if you want a server that fits in 1U of rack space, then you have to go with the Mac mini. If you want a real server, then you’re stuck with a Mac Pro sitting on it’s side, taking up 6U of vertical rack space.

Obviously the Mac mini Server as a small business server has been wildly popular, allowing small businesses who would never even consider an Xserve or Mac Pro as a server to have a proper server, but I wouldn’t have though that this would eat into the sales of the Xserve.

Apple, in their Transition Guide state that the Mac mini Server is capable of serving up to 50 users. Are they serious? Maybe if you have 50 users on email and Microsoft Office then you might get away with it, but I’ve got a client with ten less users than this and they’re giving an Xserve a pretty good hammering with around 8TB of data that they’re accessing on an attached Promise RAID.

Killing the Xserve RAID a few years back was a strange move at the time, but relatively understandable, but killing the Xserve is just plain crazy.