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The Xserves arrive
🕑 Added 2022-09-04 21:05:38 +0000 UTC
A G5 Server + Intel Server hand-delivered by Ian and Robert from the university in London, Ontario, along with the sound dampening enclosure. The enclosure was somewhat bigger than expected, but very solid. I’m told that mounting Xserves into an enclosure can be a frustrating adventure. Not what you would expect from Apple at that time. We will see how I make out mounting these servers, plus the G4 XServe Ian donated last year.
The proper way to store Xserves (since they produce the same noise level as a hair drier)
A couple of unopened spare drive modules still in the box. Very cool!
500GB in a mounting carrier for under $700!
Ian even included some copies of the Mac OS in pristine condition.
Ian has been a longtime supplier of obsolete institutional Mac hardware to this collection.
Robert is a fan of the videos and it was great meeting him and showing him the collection.
Now that I have the materials, I owe them a video.
Last weekend I was out picking up some Macintosh and non-Macintosh items. A new Patreon video coming soon about that.
Comments
Basement Macs
Ha! I remember trying to get a donated Xserve shoehorned into our weird non-standard rack. It did not go well. Our solution was to just lay it on top of an empty shelf module. I found it pretty amusing that the Xserve was louder than the combined drone of the six network switches stacked above it. Thankfully, my office was on the opposite end of the building.
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Great to read your insight into the high capability and reckless abandonment of the Xserve line. Interesting discussion points for the video. Thanks for sharing!
Christopher Yeo
Looking forward to this. I previously worked extensively within the post production space and almost exclusively Apple back in 2011-2015 period. The Xserve product line, along with 10.6 and Xsan was a brilliant solution. Aside their Active/Active configuration, the Xserve RAIDs were also lovely and very fast. The corporate focus started to fall apart with Apple from the introduction of Lion and the announcement of the end of the Xserve line. A strange decision at the time considering just how well the Mac was being perceived over Vista/ Windows 7. I know Jobs didn’t like dealing with pen pushers, yet the decision was more bitter than sweet for budding Apple SysAdmins. 10.8 was the last OS where I found was stable with a good complimentary set of Apple supported systems administrative tools. Mavericks was trash and as I’ve read since it’s pretty much been abandoned. Real shame since when Apple did this stuff, they did it well and did it right.
