Dave Schroeder is an Apple Distinguished Educator, a member of the Apple University Executive Forum and is on staff at University of Wisconsin-Madison. In short, Schroeder knows what he is talking about. His open letter to Apple about the Xserve being discontiuned is brilliant, and well worth the read:
Some of our smaller departmental or lab users may be able to run Mac OS X Server on a Mac Pro or Mac mini. At a campus level, we cannot, because these systems do not have the required mounting, power, management, and other functionality. While it is possible to rack mount a Mac Pro with third-party hardware, it is a non-starter because of the lack of dual redundant power supplies, management capabilities, and spare parts kits, to say nothing of space considerations.
Please allow virtualization of Mac OS X Server in non-Apple virtualization environments, with a commensurate license and pricing model.
Schroeder is quoted in this article from 2007, when Apple changed the EULA for OS X Server to allow for virtualization on a “Apple-labeled computer.”
What if Apple allowed Lion Server to run virtually on non-Apple hardware? Schroeder shouldn’t be alone in asking Apple to move in this direction.
Of course, this would be a major shift away from Apple’s integrated approach in the consumer realm. That said, Apple replaced the Xserve RAID with the Promise VTrak several years ago.
Running OS X Server on non-Apple hardware could be a great solution for everyone. Gone would be the expensive hardware overhead for companies looking to try OS X Server. IT professionals could simply build a virtual machine and go to town. Apple has always considered itself a software company above all else.[1. The whole reason they build hardware is for their software to have great boxes to run on.] This would just be an extension of that philosophy.
I think it’d be a Genius move on Apple’s part. But I’m not holding my breath.