Why Did Apple Discontinue Xserve? Because It’s a Dinosaur

By

HPA_Energy_Lab

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — When Apple discontinued the Xserve server last year, there was a huge outcry from the IT crowd.

But as one school in Hawaii has demonstrated, the Xserve platform is a dinosaur.

The HPA Energy Lab in Waimea, Hawaii, replaced all of its Xserve servers with Mac Minis, and now the lab uses hardly any juice.

“The entire lab uses less power than a blow dryer,” said director Dr. Bill Wiecking, speaking here at Macworld.

According to  Dr. Wiecking, an Xserve in sleep mode uses more power  than a Mac mini HDMI going full blast on all cores.

“Not a lot of people know that,” he said.

Although Mac mini servers aren’t good for everything, they are perfect for a smaller institution like HPA. The Lab discontinued its six Xserve servers and now has eight Mac mini servers serving 60 MacBooks/Pros and three i7 iMacs.

The future of computing is clearly lightweight, low-power and portable,  Dr. Wiecking said.

“Change is on the way,” he said. “You can either be a victim of it or a change agent.”

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