After Apple discontinued the Xserve in early 2011, it introduced a pair of options Mac buyers could turn to if they still wanted systems they could fit into a server rack. One is the Mac Mini Server, a $999 configuration that adds a quad-core CPU and extra hard drive to the standard Mini. The other was the Mac Pro Server, a version of the big silver box that came with lots of CPU cores and OS X Server but was otherwise not so different from the standard workstation. Apple still sells the Mac Mini Server, but the Mac Pro Server was discontinued when Apple shrank the Mac Pro late last year.
A company called Sonnet is stepping up to address that gap. Its new xMac Pro Server is a 4U rack-mountable enclosure that holds a 2013 Mac Pro, includes three standard PCI Express expansion slots that hook up to the Mac Pro's Thunderbolt ports, and has enough extra room leftover to fit two 5.25-inch rack peripherals (examples include tape drives or SSDs used for backup purposes). The Mac Pro is mounted sideways in the rack mount so as not to block its fan vents, and cable passthroughs let you to use all of the system's USB 3.0 and Ethernet ports from the outside.
Sonnet sells a similar mount for the Mac Mini server—it's a smaller 1U mount, but the concept is the same. That mount uses the Mini's Thunderbolt port to add support for up to two external PCI Express expansion cards. The xMac Pro Server is currently scheduled to begin shipping in June for an unspecified price.
reader comments
76