A History of the Xserve


MacStories:

For fans of macOS Server, this just another in a long string of disappointments over the years. But none of them were as big as the cancellation of the Xserve, Apple's rack-mountable 1U server, back in January 2011.

With macOS Server coming to an end, this is a nice write-up of the long-passed Xserve.

When the Xserve came out it seemed like a seismic shift for Apple towards serious moves into the enterprise. Not only was it impressive hardware, but its slim 1U rack profile made it attractive to data warehouses. Much like its Mac Pro computers, however, the product languished as a nitch product. It had high prices and was slow to keep pace with computer power. Even if Apple did give it enough sunlight to grow, it inevitably would have come to a similar end with on-premise data centers first consolidating with virtual servers and then shutting down completely for the cloud.