Dedicated Apple Silicon XServer

[Kuckuckstein]

Back in 2004 - 2006 we used an Apple XServer at my institute. Was sad when few years later I heard that Appel retreated from server business, although it was probably the right decision back then.

These days, was just looking into establishing my own server and I just felt that with the Apple Silicon, the time has come to reintroduce a dedicated server. They easily could offer racks with 1 - 4 M1's in them. Not sure Apple will go for the market again, but somehow I felt that beside the low power consumer devices, Apple Silicon is particularly suitable for servers.

For now I will most likely go for one or two Mac minis ... but an Apple Silicon XServer with swappable storage options would be awesome.

 

[DJLC]

I think Apple's enhanced focus on the consumer market and individual privacy may preclude them from re-entering the server market. While I do agree a rack-mount Apple Silicon server would be really cool, I don't think we're going to see this. Apple's use cases in the enterprise market are very much centered around MDM profiles coming from the cloud — not from on-premise servers. With the way macOS Server has been gutted, I'm not even really sure what you'd do with macOS on such a box. NetBoot is dead; SMB barely works; Network Home Directories / Mobile Home Directories are dead; Open Directory is all but dead; Profile Manager sucks and there are free cloud alternatives. What else would it do that a generic box from a server manufacturer can't? Where's the market?

 

[guzhogi]

I agree with DJLC: while cool, Apple's just not a server company anymore; just a consumer company. I am by no means an expert, but I hear servers are fairly low margin systems, and Apple doesn't really do that. Plus, considering how proprietary and soldered down Apple's becoming, I just don't see Apple hardware nor software being a good fir in the server-space.

 

[hobowankenobi]

The SMB server market has been shrinking for years, and what is out there is filled nicely by low-cost, low-margin offerings like Synology.

For enterprise, the only real game in town is all based around VM and Docker servers. In order to leverage Apple Silicon for a server role, they would have to supply and support some sort of VM/Docker enterprise-grade system, on top of the actual hardware. Similar challenge of a saturated market with fairly low margins, and lots of established players.

The best hope would be a convertible Mac Pro (or Mini Pro), that could be a tower or rack-mounted, and would target creative professionals that need the fastest post-production/editing machines money can buy, to run a native OS and native apps, on local networks with massive throughput.

Along those lines....maybe there could be an opportunity for 3D or AR crunching too. Still a new and growing field.

I actually still support one Mac server at work. An M1 mini, and it is great...for a dedicated purpose box, but it does not even need a Server OS or any traditional services...unlike many others might.

 

[guzhogi]

For enterprise… with fairly low margins

Two big reasons why Apple probably won't* go into the server market again. I find that Apple wants to build high-margin, consumer-based products.

*Won't, not can't. Apple seems to have the capability to bring a high quality product to the enterprise market, but not the will.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

I think they're missing a huge opportunity. Plenty of families out there completely immersed in the Apple ecosystem: phones, computers, services. Rounding out the offerings with an easily configurable entry-mid level server and wifi would be perfect. A large chunk of my clients would go all-in on the home setups. Oh well.

 

[satcomer]

I tend to to think that Snology Smart NAS could do 85-90% of what the old Mac Server gave out! You get something like this to work in Domain seamlessly easily! The you could get a small Windows server to run Domain or Open Domain easily! The have a huge Package Store to do anything you want in Synology Smart NAS!

 

[dimme]

I am using a mini running regular Mac OS as my server. I have 6 4 TB drive hooked up. It backs up all the Macs in the house, the sever is backed up to the cloud. also run a Ubuntu VM for pihole, home bridge, iamazing for iOS backup. Works well for my needs

 

[Altemose]

The problem is that the majority of workflows where Macs are prevalent do not require horsepower in rack mounted servers but rather directly on the workstation (e.g. video editing and content creation). As an IT administrator, there are only two Macs performing server functions in our 1600 workstation environment: one that does a dedicated file server for visual communications students and one that runs Profile Manager and MDS. Apple has long since accepted that it is a losing battle trying to offer so many services within Server when it does not make even the slightest dent into the market. Whether we like it or not, Windows Server and Linux are king in the major categories and the majority of everything else is being pushed to the cloud by most organizations. That said, I do miss what Server (pre-macOS 10.13) had to offer for small businesses and ease of management.

 

[Yebubbleman]

I definitely had this thought too. As soon as the Xserve crossed the other side of the PowerPC to Intel transition, it was competing with several Intel servers and quickly lost out competitively (especially with the advent of virtualization and with macOS being so poorly suited to VMs when compared to client and server iterations of Windows and Linux). Sure, an Apple Silicon Xserve, especially with the power of M1 Ultra or whatever is going into the Apple Silicon Mac Pro would revolutionize the server hardware market.

Alas, in the server software market, it's another story, entirely. macOS Server is a shadow of its former glory. Most of what you'd use a macOS Server box for is better used by either (a) a Windows Server, (b) a Linux Server, (c) an MDM provider, (d) the Cloud and/or a server in the cloud, or (e) any combination thereof. Hell, many Mac MDM providers are dropping support for the ability to be installed on a Mac running macOS which means Mac clients are going to stop being managed by a server on Apple hardware one way or another.

 

[satcomer]

Besides most modest size business seem to love Microsoft Active Directory for control go it's employees! Sense 200s2 to server 2010 Active Directory natively support Mac OS and Linux machines! Besides like I said before for the Home a modern Synology NAS software can host a Directory Server and a DHCP Server as well as it's all other Packages to add more server type stuff!