14 DAY TRIAL // Apple confirmed last year that its Xserve product would no longer be available after January 31st, but that Apple would continue to fully support it. In light of such news, a company founded by former Apple employees is seemingly now stepping up to introduce a replacement for the expensive 1U rackmount line of server computers.
Citing a report by 9 to 5 Mac, rumor-site MacRumors informs that Apple is on track to begin redirecting customers seeking Xserve/Xsan solutions to Active Storage, a company founded by former Apple employees who left just as Apple had discontinued its Xserve RAID product in 2008.
The goal of Active Storage is to “meet an unfilled need for easy-to-use, high-performance storage for Media and Creative Professionals, as well as Apple users,” the company states on its web site.
Active Storage has since updated its website with a teaser for what appears to be a replacement for Apple’s Xserve on precisely the day of the latter’s discontinuation - January 31st.
Various interchangeable messages are featured in the teaser, such as: “Not an alternative, a solution”; and “When one door closes, another opens”, which pretty much confirms the company’s intentions to pick up where Apple left off in terms of server offerings.
Active Storage teaser
MacRumors speculates that the company could even do so under Apple’s guidance, with the teaser image seemingly showing a rackmountable hardware unit in a 2U form factor.
Softpedia reported in December 2010 that the Enterprise Desktop Alliance had carried out a survey to show how Xserve owners were responding to Apple’s surprising announcement on November 5, 2010 that the Cupertino giant was ending shipments as of January 31, 2011.
According to the survey, 65% of respondents said they expected to stay with their current Xserves for at least the following two years.
Over one third said they would migrate to one of Apple’s recommended alternatives, survey results showed.
Another third of respondents were unsure what solution they would choose for the services they currently run on Apple’s 1U rackmount server computers.
Finally, the most popular use of the Xserve - 90% of all classes of organizations - was as a file server, according to the survey results.