6 ms·

After the death of Xsan, this product never made sense.

by floatinglotus 4y ago

sgjohnson 4y ago
Even with Xsan it didn’t really make sense.
- greedo 4y ago
  Xsan was terrible when I used it. Each side of disks was unique and couldn't be aggregated into one volume, it was slow, expensive, and the software was very unreliable. I can't even count the number of support tickets I opened for this POS.
  - sabujp 4y ago
    yeah it was bad, but I eventually determined the problem was a faulty motherboard on one of our xserves by switching hardware around
ndespres 4y ago
It did fill a gap for a while unmet by a lot of services that we take for granted now. A Mac Mini with macOS Server to host email, calendar sharing, file sharing, and Time Machine backups went a long way towards meeting a small office's IT needs. It's mostly supplanted by things like Google Workspace, Office 365, Dropbox, and proper MDM solutions these days, but wasn't a bad choice up through maybe 2014 depending on the situation.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Even as early as 2008, it didn’t make sense for a small company to host their own e-mail servers. Hosted Outlook was a much better choice.
  - ndespres 4y ago
    My memory of the hosted Outlook/Exchange landscape of that time is much more negative. It was expensive, had inconsistent or costly support for ActiveSync devices, had no integration or federation with existing on-premise Active Directory solutions, management consoles of shared/hosted Exchange providers were difficult to administer. Broadband was much more limited, so remotely-hosted mailboxes were a hassle.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      By 2009 at least, iPhones supported hosted ActiveSync. I was writing field service software (“sending people places to do things”) for ruggedized Windows Mobile devices. I do seem to remember some of our customers using ActiveSync from hosted Outlook for emails alongside our software.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Hosted exchange was kinda expensive and slow until Microsoft started competing directly from my experience.
CodeWriter23 4y ago
I think the death knell started with discontinuation of Xserve.

After the death of Xsan, this product never made sense.

sgjohnson 4y ago

Even with Xsan it didn’t really make sense.

greedo 4y ago
Xsan was terrible when I used it. Each side of disks was unique and couldn't be aggregated into one volume, it was slow, expensive, and the software was very unreliable. I can't even count the number of support tickets I opened for this POS.
- sabujp 4y ago
  yeah it was bad, but I eventually determined the problem was a faulty motherboard on one of our xserves by switching hardware around

ndespres 4y ago

It did fill a gap for a while unmet by a lot of services that we take for granted now. A Mac Mini with macOS Server to host email, calendar sharing, file sharing, and Time Machine backups went a long way towards meeting a small office's IT needs. It's mostly supplanted by things like Google Workspace, Office 365, Dropbox, and proper MDM solutions these days, but wasn't a bad choice up through maybe 2014 depending on the situation.

scarface74 4y ago
Even as early as 2008, it didn’t make sense for a small company to host their own e-mail servers. Hosted Outlook was a much better choice.
- ndespres 4y ago
  My memory of the hosted Outlook/Exchange landscape of that time is much more negative. It was expensive, had inconsistent or costly support for ActiveSync devices, had no integration or federation with existing on-premise Active Directory solutions, management consoles of shared/hosted Exchange providers were difficult to administer. Broadband was much more limited, so remotely-hosted mailboxes were a hassle.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    By 2009 at least, iPhones supported hosted ActiveSync. I was writing field service software (“sending people places to do things”) for ruggedized Windows Mobile devices. I do seem to remember some of our customers using ActiveSync from hosted Outlook for emails alongside our software.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Hosted exchange was kinda expensive and slow until Microsoft started competing directly from my experience.

CodeWriter23 4y ago

I think the death knell started with discontinuation of Xserve.