Does Apple use Xserves?

[DTphonehome]

I was thinking the other day... I haven't seen too many Xserves around, and they seem to update them on a very rare basis. So why do they even bother with that line; it's gotta be a drop in the bucket for them, profit-wise? So I thought, Apple *might* be using a few servers in their operations (), so do they use Xserves? If so, they may be their own best customer, and by having their own server line they don't have to buy servers from the competition. Thoughts?

 

[jdechko]

I was thinking the other day... I haven't seen too many Xserves around, and they seem to update them on a very rare basis. So why do they even bother with that line; it's gotta be a drop in the bucket for them, profit-wise? So I thought, Apple *might* be using a few servers in their operations (), so do they use Xserves? If so, they may be their own best customer, and by having their own server line they don't have to buy servers from the competition. Thoughts?

Yes, they use XServes.

 

[belvdr]

Unless someone has intimate knowledge of the internal architecture, nobody knows. For much of the web facing architecture, they use caching services.

 

[grapes911]

I know Oracle uses Xserves for storage. I'm sure a lot of companies use them. If they weren't profitable, Apple would have abandoned them a long time ago.

 

[DTphonehome]

If they weren't profitable, Apple would have abandoned them a long time ago.

Right, for sure, but could it be that they are profitable simply because Apple gets them at cost, and they use so many of them?

 

[grapes911]

Like I said, Oracle uses them for certain things. I've heard that different branches of the military use them for various projects. South Park Studios is known to use them. I'm sure there are many examples. Its probably not something advertised much.

 

[Decrepit]

I know Oracle uses Xserves for storage. I'm sure a lot of companies use them. If they weren't profitable, Apple would have abandoned them a long time ago.

I wonder how long that will last with the Sun acquisition.

 

[Les Kern]

A lot of their stuff is runs on/at Akamai, and that's I believe Linux. I think the music store runs on Solaris... I thought I heard that somewhere. Maybe Oracle now. Hmmmm.... Maybe a Google is in order.

 

[viraldesign]

apple actually does sell a lot of XServe's, believe it or not a lot of hosting companies rent them out and a lot of people buy them and use them for various awesome apple features.

lots of schools that are on macs run XServes as well, which in southern california is quite a few .

and of course apple probably uses a lot of them for web applications that doesnt require caching/cdn technology.

they're apple, they developed their own hardware, they could easily put any OS they want on those bad boys.

 

[velocityg4]

I'd imagine most any company that is all or mostly Mac that needs a server uses the xserve. As Windows to Mac file sharing is slow. I imagine Linux is pretty quick.

 

[hakuryuu]

Apple uses a pretty large variety of hardware and software including Xserves and of course OS X Server. I have looked at a few of their job postings (trying to figure out what I want to focus my studies on next) and they use everything. I know for a fact they use a good bit of Hitachi storage hardware (SANs, etc.) that they are deploying both here in CA and at their new datacenter in NC.

 

[ark0n]

Apple is a BIG Sun Shop

Having worked at Apple as a consultant for more than 1 year replacing their Mac/Windows based ERP platform with a Sun and SAP implementation I can say with quite a bit of insight that Apple is a Sun shop in their datacenter. They migrated to Sun in their web farms and over at Pixar they were big Sun clusters used for rendering. I know they migrated off Sun for Pixar's renderfarms to cheap Linux servers, quite effectively.
While my work was done in the 2002 to 2004 time periods, I have it on good word Apple still likes their Sun Servers and have moved almost all render farms over to Linux at Pixar.

 

[Winni]

While my work was done in the 2002 to 2004 time periods, I have it on good word Apple still likes their Sun Servers and have moved almost all render farms over to Linux at Pixar.

Linux also runs on Sun hardware, so moving away from Solaris doesn't necessarily mean that they also moved away from Sun hardware.

 

[jabbawok]

Like I said, Oracle uses them for certain things. I've heard that different branches of the military use them for various projects. South Park Studios is known to use them. I'm sure there are many examples. Its probably not something advertised much.

Last time I looked they used Linux AMD based servers for renderingnand macs for creation.

 

[linuxcooldude]

Last time I looked they used Linux AMD based servers for renderingnand macs for creation.

I believe your right on that as I've seen an article on this. I think they use Mac Pro workstations along with linux type render farms.

Just because the average user does not use them its where big businesses utilize them the most.

 

[chrismacguy]

It should also be noted that other parts of Apple definitely use XServes (Im thinking the XServe and OS X Server Development Teams here - they definitely use it). Also, they certainly use WebObjects on some platform.

 

[Serif]

I believe your right on that as I've seen an article on this. I think they use Mac Pro workstations along with linux type render farms.

And if they're running large numbers of Mac Pro workstations then they would need client management, the obvious solution to which would be OS X Server running on XServes.