Did you know Apple used to sell rackmount servers?

[geerlingguy@mastodon.social]

Did you know Apple used to sell rackmount servers?

In today's #MARCHintosh video, I restore an Xserve G5, and explore what made these machines tick—and some reasons why Apple stopped selling them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFnvZ4NWr00

[0x58@infosec.exchange]

@geerlingguy Yes! Good memories admin'ing then, circa 2003-2004 - That was fun!

[anton@social.dollmaier.name]

@geerlingguy ha! Don't forget the storage RAIDs! Fiber channel. Impressive system.

[geerlingguy@mastodon.social]

@anton Those are in shorter supply—and I worry if I wanted to pick one up that needs shipping, if it would get damaged in transit. It'd be cool to have a setup though... especially if I could redesign the guts for SATA drives and use it as a modern backplane!

[stephen@thisisnotaserver.com]

@geerlingguy I was wondering with their push to build more AI servers for themselves if the mac pro would simply turn into more of a rack mount solution. They could use it internally but also sell it at an extreme markup to those interested. But with them likely just going to google probably not.

[covercash@mastodon.social]

@geerlingguy and don’t forget about this beauty!

[eljojo@ruby.social]

@geerlingguy

[bongmaster@hol.ogra.ph]

@geerlingguy@mastodon.social yuss, I used to have an old Xserv. it was heavy and noisy XD I got something much quieter now

[maccellar@bitbang.social]

@geerlingguy I had two of these at one time, a dual G4 and a later Intel model. The G4 was noisy, but the Intel was ridiculously loud - like having a jet engine running in a rack.

[trode@hachyderm.io]

@stephen @geerlingguy There is a rack mount mac pro option. Who knows when they will update it tho.

[stephen@thisisnotaserver.com]

@trode @geerlingguy I know the Intel one had a rackmount option but I didnt know if the Apple Silicon model did. Either way was it 2u or 3u?

[everyplace@mastodon.social]

@geerlingguy ugh I should’ve gotten you a fun pic of my old xserve table! It still exists, but is no longer serving websites. There was a time when I ran it as a real web host though, hooked up to a WiMAX T1 that was point-to-point broadcast from a dish on the Chrysler Building, straight to my favorite apartment I ever had in Brooklyn.

We let the Flickr account lapse but the direct links still work from 2011:

- https://flic.kr/p/962ABp
- https://flic.kr/p/962BcM
- https://flic.kr/p/965Cfq

[trode@hachyderm.io]

@stephen @geerlingguy 5U

[stephen@thisisnotaserver.com]

@trode @geerlingguy Ooof. Im curious what case they went with when they were building their own Apple SIlicon servers. I would think a 1u or 2u supermicro or something...

[trode@hachyderm.io]

@stephen @geerlingguy the Rac Pro is for media production houses and places like that. Bigger cases are quieter and allow the same hardware as the tower. The custom servers Apple has for themselvs I'm sure are drastically different designs. Datacenters are about density.

[flywheel@friendica.dk]

@geerlingguy I do and I always thought they where extremely cool.

[resuna@ohai.social]

@geerlingguy

We bought a handful of Xserve G4s to use in a colo and discovered they were too deep to physically fit in the racks, they ended up acting as the "desktops" of any developers who were willing to ignore the sound.

The colo ended up with a mix of HP DL360s running Linux and 1u or 2u Alphaservers running Tru64.