Tom Yager reviews the new Xserve

The Xserve, the jewel in Apple's enterprise crown. We all know that Apple missed their target ship date, but that's ok if you believe what Tom Yager is saying. His two part review (part one, part two) paints a picture of a near perfect 1U server that is more than capable of handling most jobs. Tom does warn that if you are just looking at the list of parts that make up the Xserve you won't see the full picture. As with all Macs the Xserve is more than its components, it is also the software that is running on it. All Xserves come with Mac OS X Server 10.4 Unlimited-Client Edition at no extra cost, and once you power it on this thing is ready to go.

Now, Tom mentions that this isn't a perfect server and if you're looking only at numbers you can build on for yourself at a cheaper price, but you'll be missing out on all the nice touches: the OS, the mix and match hard drives, the large number of Firewire and USB ports, and so much more.