Does Apple sell Mainframe computers used by very large corporations like banks?

[Sodium Chloride]

Does Apple itself use Mainframe computers to manage their business? What computers are these?

 

[hwojtek]

No.

 

[maflynn]

Does Apple itself use Mainframe computers to manage their business? What computers are these?

mainframe computers are now a niche sector in the computer industry. Many large companies have no need for that sort of monolithic single computer. Apple, like Microsoft, and others eats their own dogfood. That is they use Macs for their business needs, as MS uses PCs for theirs.

 

[maflynn]

Oh by the way, I started my computer career as a computer operator and then a programmer on an IBM mainframe - oh those were the days. I still have my old JCL book

 

[Basic75]

That is they use Macs for their business needs

Can't we be pretty sure that Apple uses Linux PCs for the cloud services? Nothing Apple builds is well suited to server farms. The new rack mount Mac Pro doesn't even have a management interface. Independent of that, I'd be surprised if Apple used mainframes anywhere, though I question how us random people on the internet can definitively state that they don't.

 

[maflynn]

Can't we be pretty sure that Apple uses Linux PCs for the cloud services?

Here's what the google gave me

 

[Basic75]

Here's what the google gave me

So they use somebody else's Linux servers?

 

[Silencio]

Apple has always been a microcomputer company. That is in opposition to the mainframes from IBM and the like, and the minicomputers produced by DEC, or workstation class computers from Sun and SGI. Those Apple occasionally produced server hardware like the Apple Network Server and Xserve, it was clearly not their forte.

IMO there's no shame in them using other vendors' hardware and OSes in their data centers. Use the best tools for the job.

 

[Aggedor]

Oh by the way, I started my computer career as a computer operator and then a programmer on an IBM mainframe - oh those were the days. I still have my old JCL book

The good old days! Not mainframes, but I worked with SGI workstations in the late 90s. I absolutely adore the design of those machines. We had Indigos, Octanes, O2s, Onyx, and another purple machine that was the size of a refrigerator (can't remember the model).

 

[GMShadow]

Apple's server farms come from several sources - Supermicro used to provide a lot of the boards. They use Oracle and SAP products on the backend, among other things. Akamai also handles most of their CDN stuff.

And, in a rare case, though while I'm sure they lease a lot of it out, Apple still controls the 17. /8 IPv4 address block.

 

[chabig]

So they use somebody else's Linux servers?

They do use some third party cloud providers, yes.

 

[chrfr]

Apple's server farms come from several sources - Supermicro used to provide a lot of the boards. They use Oracle and SAP products on the backend, among other things. Akamai also handles most of their CDN stuff.

And, in a rare case, though while I'm sure they lease a lot of it out, Apple still controls the 17. /8 IPv4 address block.

Apple retains control of all of 17.0.0.0/8:
Use Apple products on enterprise networks - Apple Support

If your firewall supports using hostnames, you might be able to use most Apple services above by allowing outbound connections to *.apple.com. If your firewall can only be configured with IP addresses, allow outbound connections to 17.0.0.0/8. The entire 17.0.0.0/8 address block is assigned to Apple.