Australian IT posted details of a recent Xserve success story. A PC-dependent Australian resources company called Ausmelt decided to upgrade their file server and switched from a Hewlett Packard-made system to an Apple Xserve.
One nail in the coffin of a new Windows-based server is Microsoft’s new licensing scheme, according to the technical development manager responsible for the system. Another was concern that whatever they’d buy would be obsolete with Microsoft Server 2003 on the horizon.
“Linux was pretty big, so we had a look at it. Talking to people who run it, you get these real gurus who run it as a Unix-based system with command line interface and other stuff, which I don’t have time for because my background is in metallurgy, not IT,” said the manager, Robert Matusewicz.
Matusewicz said he liked the Xserve because hardware and software were sourced from the same vendor, and Apple’s client licensing is considerably more liberal than its competitors.
The cost of the fully configured Xserve also came in at about half the price of the Windows servers he was looking at — an important issue in the decision-making process, because Matusewicz admitted that if the Xserve had come “within a bull’s roar” of the PC systems he was looking at, he would have leaned towards a Windows server “due simply to the comfort factor” that such a system would have provided.
The clincher was when his local Apple reseller — Designwyse — agreed to take back the Xserve if Ausmelt discovered it wouldn’t work for them. They ended up selling Ausmelt the system, configured with dual processors and 2GB of memory, 720GB of hard disk space, and assorted peripherals, for less than (Australian) $20,000.
What makes it particularly interesting is that outside of the Xserve, Ausmelt runs a Windows environment. The Xserve has been running throughout the Ausmelt enterprise since June.
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