Apple is retiring the Xserve mac server – What mac server can you buy instead?

The Xserve has been Apple’s server of choice.  Well, it used to be its only server that was sold for awhile until the Mac Mini server came along at a cheaper price point about a year ago.  As of January 31, 2010, no more Xserves will be sold.  The Xserve has been used as a robust server for small to large Mac networks.  Now, due to presumably low demand, it’s been given the axe.

The replacement for the Xserve is the Mac Pro Server, believe it or not, but in a server edition.  Here are the specs you’ll find in the Mac Pro server:

• 2.8GHZ Quad-core Xeon processor (can be upgraded up to 2 2.93GHZ 6-core processors)
• up to 32GB of RAM
• 4 hard drive bays
• Mac OS X Server Snow Leopard operating system

The biggest difference of the Xserve and Mac Pro Server is the size.  The Xserve is a rack server that may be easily slipped into any environment without much space needed since it’s the size of a switch.  The Mac Pro Server is a big tower which needs adequate size to store it.  So, if you don’t have a big server room, or good ventilation, the Mac Pro might present a computer issue. 

The cost is $500 cheaper for the Mac Pro Server at $2,500 (Xserve starts at $3,000).  Of course, the sky is the limit in regard to upgrades with RAM and hard drives.  The advantage of the Mac Pro Server is that it is big enough so that it is easy to replace or upgrade computer parts.  The Xserve is so small that replacing parts is more on the difficult end.

An additional server that you may consider is the Mac Mini server.  It starts only at $1,000 and is a good option for small computer networks.