Virtualized OS X Server May Be Their Goal
You can run OS X Server just fine inside VMWare; it's the best way to do it these days, honestly. If you need all the redundancy/reliability/capacity of RAID+SAN+hot swappable bits, you can't beat a virtualized environment since you get the ability to migrate between datacenters seemlessly, as well as all the RAID+SAN+physical redundancy.
For those that swear you can't put OS X Server in a VM, Apple updated the licensing a few years back to explicitly allow it. If apple tweaks the license to remove the 'Apple Hardware' spot, problem solved in a few lines of legalese. Also, for those who think it's a kludge or hard, here's the guide, updated this year, including 10.5 compatibility, etc. Check out the *1* page instructions on page 29 (well, half on 29 and half on 30, but you get the point):
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/GuestOS_guide.pdf
I run datacenters (not closets; call it 250,000 square feet of actual populated raised floor space), and virtualized workload management is one of the best things we've seen in the last 15 years (Yes, I'm dating myself a bit by admitting I've run large datacenters for a decade and a half; sue me). I have seen power utilization climb astronomically after being fairly static for many years, and it's now leveling off again thanks to Intel/AMD deciding GHz aren't the only thing that matter, and that power is a design element to care about, along with the extra cores meaning virtualization is easy and effective.
The 'value' of OS X Server and all the associated bits that people absolutely love are similar to the value found in OS X. However, in the enterprise environment, people tend to already have 'enterprise level support' available, and Apple probably has decided that while they make their own hardware so their software 'should' *always* work the way they expect with the least possible permutations, letting people put OS X server inside the limited number of hypervisors out there accomplishes the same goal with even less effort/work/expense on their side, *and* removed the 'fear' by the Enterprise of exactly this type of event (Apple discontinuing a piece of *hardware*, or not refreshing it for a year and a half, and paying apremium because it's not a core competency for them). It lets an Enterprise put the software on a platform they already know and trust (Hypervisor of choice on hardware of choice). That's *removing* a barrier to acceptance, trust me.
For what it's worth, I'm a Unix geek, and a fairly 'old school' one, in that I used to deal with CP/M, VAX/VMS, OSF/AIX/HPUX/Solaris/Irix/BSDs 'back in the day', 'migrated' from Minix to Linux in 1991 and was one of the first RHCE's, had a NeXT on my living room end table, and I rejoiced the day it was obvious Mac was going Unix underneath. As a datacenter nerd, I don't have any bones to pick with Apple other than I always felt they were missing their opportunity to do well in the server market, in part *because* they were focusing on the Xserve at times (but just a little bit, and not enough to do much with it). I love the XServe for what it is, but it was never going to take over the world in it's current form. Oh, and full disclosure: I have an iPhone on my hip, an iPad sitting on my desk, I'm on a 15" MBP and my 27" iMac is my workstation at home. So, I'm not a Unix nerd who hates Apple gear and secretly wants them to fail.
Apple does their best value-add with the usability and experience sides of their gear and software. In the enterprise, they can easily continue to do well and expand on that without making the boxes that run it, as there is much less importance of physical control of the box for a server as there is for a 'revolutionary' device like an iPod, iPad, iPhone, Air, MBPro, etc. Servers are invisible, and the hardware is a means to an end. VMWare and other hypervisor platforms are just as good for Apple as 'real' hardware, and it's possible that this will actually let them focus on all of the 'value' part of a server (what the software *does*) and ignore what it's runnig on, which is a huge shift for them, but possibly an incredibly profitable one. I think this could be a great long-term plan on their part.
You can run OS X Server just fine inside VMWare; it's the best way to do it these days, honestly. If you need all the redundancy/reliability/capacity of RAID+SAN+hot swappable bits, you can't beat a virtualized environment since you get the ability to migrate between datacenters seemlessly, as well as all the RAID+SAN+physical redundancy.
For those that swear you can't put OS X Server in a VM, Apple updated the licensing a few years back to explicitly allow it. If apple tweaks the license to remove the 'Apple Hardware' spot, problem solved in a few lines of legalese. Also, for those who think it's a kludge or hard, here's the guide, updated this year, including 10.5 compatibility, etc. Check out the *1* page instructions on page 29 (well, half on 29 and half on 30, but you get the point):
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/GuestOS_guide.pdf
I run datacenters (not closets; call it 250,000 square feet of actual populated raised floor space), and virtualized workload management is one of the best things we've seen in the last 15 years (Yes, I'm dating myself a bit by admitting I've run large datacenters for a decade and a half; sue me). I have seen power utilization climb astronomically after being fairly static for many years, and it's now leveling off again thanks to Intel/AMD deciding GHz aren't the only thing that matter, and that power is a design element to care about, along with the extra cores meaning virtualization is easy and effective.
The 'value' of OS X Server and all the associated bits that people absolutely love are similar to the value found in OS X. However, in the enterprise environment, people tend to already have 'enterprise level support' available, and Apple probably has decided that while they make their own hardware so their software 'should' *always* work the way they expect with the least possible permutations, letting people put OS X server inside the limited number of hypervisors out there accomplishes the same goal with even less effort/work/expense on their side, *and* removed the 'fear' by the Enterprise of exactly this type of event (Apple discontinuing a piece of *hardware*, or not refreshing it for a year and a half, and paying apremium because it's not a core competency for them). It lets an Enterprise put the software on a platform they already know and trust (Hypervisor of choice on hardware of choice). That's *removing* a barrier to acceptance, trust me.
For what it's worth, I'm a Unix geek, and a fairly 'old school' one, in that I used to deal with CP/M, VAX/VMS, OSF/AIX/HPUX/Solaris/Irix/BSDs 'back in the day', 'migrated' from Minix to Linux in 1991 and was one of the first RHCE's, had a NeXT on my living room end table, and I rejoiced the day it was obvious Mac was going Unix underneath. As a datacenter nerd, I don't have any bones to pick with Apple other than I always felt they were missing their opportunity to do well in the server market, in part *because* they were focusing on the Xserve at times (but just a little bit, and not enough to do much with it). I love the XServe for what it is, but it was never going to take over the world in it's current form. Oh, and full disclosure: I have an iPhone on my hip, an iPad sitting on my desk, I'm on a 15" MBP and my 27" iMac is my workstation at home. So, I'm not a Unix nerd who hates Apple gear and secretly wants them to fail.
Apple does their best value-add with the usability and experience sides of their gear and software. In the enterprise, they can easily continue to do well and expand on that without making the boxes that run it, as there is much less importance of physical control of the box for a server as there is for a 'revolutionary' device like an iPod, iPad, iPhone, Air, MBPro, etc. Servers are invisible, and the hardware is a means to an end. VMWare and other hypervisor platforms are just as good for Apple as 'real' hardware, and it's possible that this will actually let them focus on all of the 'value' part of a server (what the software *does*) and ignore what it's runnig on, which is a huge shift for them, but possibly an incredibly profitable one. I think this could be a great long-term plan on their part.
