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Xserve RAID Discontinued?

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The Cost

I called up Apple and got a quote for the Promise RAID unit. I got a quote through my education store, so it will be even higher if you aren't ordering for an educational institution!

The minimum amount of storage you can order with it is 8x750GB drives. The cost for this unit with about 5.4TiB of storage in the educational store is $11,999.

Great. Thanks Apple for providing a solution that is even more expensive than the already stupidly expensive XServe RAID! Looks like I'm going to have to buy the other unit I was looking at that costs $4K without drives.
 
XServe RAID IS DEAD!!

Just spoke to UK Apple Store Business guys. XServe RAID 100% gone. UK Store will likely be updated overnight.
 
But I am sure the IT departments are thrilled at the iPod Shuffle price reduction.🙄
As others have said this is why Apple will NEVER make inroads into Enterprise.
They need to have long term commitment to their products, not just zap them off their site one day.
The odd thing is that the X-Serve RAID has been installed in many installations where that is the only Apple product. It offered huge storage at a very aggressive price. It was not state of the art but not everyone needs that. Sometimes just huge amounts of storage at a reasonable price fill the bill.
They just killed their X-Serve sales with this move as well. No IT department is going to trust them not to wake up one morning and decide that it is not making enough money, so goodbye.
Apple has just shown they have ZERO interest in making inroads into Enterprise. Sad.
 
dtemp said:
I called up Apple and got a quote for the Promise RAID unit. I got a quote through my education store, so it will be even higher if you aren't ordering for an educational institution!

The minimum amount of storage you can order with it is 8x750GB drives. The cost for this unit with about 5.4TiB of storage in the educational store is $11,999.

Great. Thanks Apple for providing a solution that is even more expensive than the already stupidly expensive XServe RAID! Looks like I'm going to have to buy the other unit I was looking at that costs $4K without drives.
Click to expand...

The X-Serve RAID was one of the least expensive solutions per GIG! What are you talking about? The price for 10TB on an X-Serve RAID was equal to 5.4 on the Promise.
 
Unspeaked said:
Though I agree it's a bad thing the XRAID is gone, I don't understand the arguments that it was so great looking and the Promise solution isn't.

These are server components we're talking about. 9 times out of 10 - maybe more - they're in a rack somewhere in some closet or server room and never seen by human eyes.

This isn't an iMac or MacBook that gets looked at constantly. I don't really care what my RAID looks like, as long as it works.

That being said, the XRAID works pretty well 🙂
Click to expand...

Yeah, most of the people (not all) who are commenting on this has never even seen or heard the Xserve Raid in person. And you are 100% right, those of us who use this product have it tucked away on a rack in either a closet or a computer room.

It's basically a product that other companies that focus on this type of technology can do cheaper and better than Apple.
 
tivoli2 said:
Does anyone think this has any real implications or foreshadowing for professional level Apple technology, or am I just being a nervous ninny? Don't want to turn this into an "i"gadgets rant, I'm just saying I've been nervous since the whole iPhone thing and how it seemingly pushed all else to the sidelines. Hopefully I'm mistaken and my perceptions are unwarranted. 😕
Click to expand...

Yes, they are 100% unwarranted. See my previous post, this type of product can be done better and cheaper by another company.
 
whatever said:
Yes, they are 100% unwarranted. See my previous post, this type of product can be done better and cheaper by another company.
Click to expand...
And see my previous posts saying they are entirely warranted. Sure they can be done by other companies (better/cheaper? not sure.), but enterprise I.T. isn't ever happy with surprises, and Apple simply can't resist this sort of nasty surprise. It wreaks havoc with planning and budgeting.

(And yes, I've "seen" an Xserve RAID before... and worked with them along with every Xserve from the original ear-shattering G4 to the present.)
 
kaisdaddy said:
RAID storage is one of those markets where you have to be quick on your feet. Apple is not generally known for adjusting to the market in a hurry.

There are just too many other options out there that are either faster, cheaper or both. Granted, none of them probably look as good as Xserve (although the Pro DQ from Dulce systems is nice looking), but when you're spending that much money on storage, aesthetics are probably not at the top of your list of must-have features.
Click to expand...

http://tinyurl.com/2ohu2g
 
XServe is far from dead - it's a beutiful machine and rock-solid

parapup said:
...
Wonder they will do the same thing for XServe itself? Sure it is a nicely designed product with reasonable price but not many people want to run OS X Server - compatibility, performance, training reasons etc.

I think Apple should start supporting 3rd party operating systems on the Xserve (much like how Sun does - sure they would like you to buy Solaris but don't want to lose a sale if you are a Linux or Windows shop) and see the sales picking up - there is nothing lacking in that product apart from OS Vendor Support.
Click to expand...

I'm not so sure about this. We upgraded to a "Intel" XServe Quadcore, 4 GB RAM 1x SAS + 2x 750 GB SATA drives last year. Let me tell you it is the best ever machine to admin. My parents could easily do my job when it comes to setting up a website or new users and mail accounts. Remore Management Tools are awesome (coming from Windows boxes in the last 7 years), fast and it just runs for months(!) on end. No restart every two weeks for some service patch crap. This thing just runs and runs and runs.

Never a non-Apple Server for us... 🙂

dit: That being said: A SAN box is not much more than a power supply with lots of drives - THAT does not require massive "Apple" technology etc. It's like a printer or a scanner - doesn't have to come from Apple as they could not keep up with the cheap end, and why should they. Considerung marketing efforts required to pump out a box full of drives as technologically advanced... nah. Focus on the XServe, that is one hell of a hot machine. Btw. if I sound like a hyper-geek, I'm not really. Just very pleased with our XServe so far. The iPhone is still my favourite "gadget"...
 
My personal opinion as far as Apple is concerened in regards to moving more in the Enterprise, being an Admin myself of a Windows Server Network the only way Apple has a chance to make more of a headway into the Enterprise is by letting you install Mac OS X Server on ANY peice of hardware. There is NO WAY anyone planning on 'switching' to a Mac based network is going to purchase a Xserve and a 'Promise' SAN for the price they want for the hardware. Just my thoughts...
 
JonasLondon said:
... and it just runs for months(!) on end. No restart every two weeks for some service patch crap...
Click to expand...

"Patch Tuesday" is a monthly event, not every two weeks. That bit of exaggeration costs you a lot of credility.... Why not say the truth? [typo - "credibility"]
Windows servers also stay up for month after month - one doesn't apply patches for software that's disabled or not used on a server.
 
Pretty much every time Apple discontinued a device, people have said it was b/c the device wasn't selling well enough or was selling too well and was cannibalizing the sales of another Apple device.

I remember the cube and people saying that it was too expensive for a consumer product but not expandable enough to be a pro computer. That's a recurring problem I see w/ Apple: while their designs are awesome, they charge too much and do too little/don't have enough options. Most current case is the MacBook Air.

But, we have to remember, the average consumer is not as well technically minded as most of you reading this so they don't really know the difference is SSD and HDD are, much less care. They just care about something that works for them. How it does it, they don't really care.

Also, it seems that Apple has a conflict of interests: on the one hand, it wants high market share. On the other hand, they want to make the really fancy, high class devices. Unfortunately, they're all fairly expensive. Plus, isn't something like 60% of the world's wealth is in 1% of the people? So a lot of people can't afford to buy Apple products.
 
I just bought an Xserve and an XRAID. I received the Xserve, but I haven't gotten the RAID yet. I wonder if this is what is holding up the RAID. Time to contact my Rep.
 
JonasLondon said:
Never a non-Apple Server for us... 🙂
Click to expand...

May be for your needs OSX Server works well - but the market has voted against it. And I wasn't complaining about the hardware part of the Xserve, that part is good from price, performance and design PoV - I was saying Apple would have to kill that product like the Xserve RAID if there are few takers (that includes you and others 😉 ) due to the non availability of support for popular "Enterprise" operating systems.

I mean why not give people an <i>option</i> of other more mainstream OSes - there is no point in forcing OS X Server on people if it cannot work for them. (The problems aren't just performance and stability related - software availability is also a big thing.)
 
guzhogi said:
Pretty much every time Apple discontinued a device, people have said it was b/c the device wasn't selling well enough or was selling too well and was cannibalizing the sales of another Apple device.

I remember the cube and people saying that it was too expensive for a consumer product but not expandable enough to be a pro computer. That's a recurring problem I see w/ Apple: while their designs are awesome, they charge too much and do too little/don't have enough options. Most current case is the MacBook Air.
Click to expand...

The difference between this and the Cube is the Cube was gone fairly quickly. It was available for just under a year.

The RAID, on the other hand, has been on sale in one form or another since early 2003 - five full years of availability.

So... it wasn't just a product they were testing out and decided not to sell, like the Cube.


But, we have to remember, the average consumer is not as well technically minded as most of you reading this so they don't really know the difference is SSD and HDD are, much less care. They just care about something that works for them. How it does it, they don't really care.

Also, it seems that Apple has a conflict of interests: on the one hand, it wants high market share. On the other hand, they want to make the really fancy, high class devices. Unfortunately, they're all fairly expensive. Plus, isn't something like 60% of the world's wealth is in 1% of the people? So a lot of people can't afford to buy Apple products.
Click to expand...

Ironically, Apple's RAID was actually less expensive than most similar products and if anything, may have failed because it was viewed at as too cheap and not upscale enough 🙂
 
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