Xserve - Xserve G4

Apple introduced the Xserve on May 14, 2002 (released in June). Originally, it had one or two PowerPC G4 processors running at 1.0 GHz and supported up to 2 GB of PC-2100 memory on a 64-bit memory bus. Three FireWire 400 ports (one in front, two in rear), two USB 1.1 ports (rear), an RS-232 management interface (rear), and a single onboard Gigabit Ethernet port (rear) were provided for external connectivity. Two 64-bit/66 MHz PCI slots and one 32-bit/66 MHz PCI/AGP slot were provided; in the default configuration the two PCI slots were filled with an ATI Rage video card and an additional gigabit Ethernet card. Up to 4 UATA/100 hard disk drives (60 or 120 GB) fit into hot-swap bays in the front, allowing software RAID-0 and 1 arrays to be created. A tray-loading CD-ROM drive was mounted in the front.

Initially, two configuration options were available: a single-processor Xserve with 256MiB of memory at $2999 and a dual-processor Xserve with 512 MiB of memory at $3999. Both shipped with a single 60 GB disk and models before August 24. 2002 shipped with Mac OS X v10.1 "Puma" Server, after August 24, 2002 shipped with Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar" Server.

On February 10, 2003 Apple released an improved and expanded Xserve lineup. Improvements included one or two 1.33 GHz PowerPC G4 processors, two FireWire 800 ports (rear), faster memory (PC-2700), and higher capacity Ultra ATA/133 hard disk drives (80 or 160 GB). Also, the front plate was redesigned for a slot-loading CD-ROM. A new model, the Xserve Cluster node was announced at the same price as the single-processor Xserve, featuring two 1.33 GHz processors, no optical drive, a single hard drive bay, no video or Ethernet cards, and a 10-client version of "Jaguar" server.

On April 2, 2003 the Xserve RAID was introduced, providing a much higher capacity and higher throughput disk subsystem for the Xserve.