After more than eight years on the market, Apple is euthanizing the Xserve. On January 31, 2011, Apple will stop selling the Mac server hardware, though support will continue for the three companies that have purchased Xserves. We're just kidding; there are plenty of admins who are undoubtedly surprised and disappointed by the news. Apple is offering one small consolation: the Mac Pro Server.

Apple issued a transitional guide for those looking for something to fill the empty server rack in their hearts. The document recommends that users check out either the Mac mini server or the Mac Pro running Snow Leopard Server. Customers who buy Xserves up until January 31 will get the standard one-year warranty from Apple, and AppleCare customers will still be able to extend that support out to three years if they so choose.

For those curious, the Mac Pro server starts at $2,999 and comes stock with one 2.8GHz quad-core Xeon (Nehalem), two 1TB hard drives, and 8GB of built-in RAM (four 2GB modules). That can be scaled all the way up to two 2.93GHz 6-core Xeons (Westmere) for an extra $3,475, 32GB of RAM for an extra $3,400, and either a 2TB SATA or 512GB solid state drive in each of the two drive bays (there are two more drive bays that can be pimped out too). It comes with Mac OS X Server preinstalled.

Fans of the Xserve will undoubtedly still be disappointed, though. The Mac mini can't measure up in terms of performance, and the Mac Pro requires significantly more physical space than an Xserve (not to mention that it lacks certain features that the Xserve has, such as Lights-Out Management (LOM).

Though we were somewhat surprised to hear of the news this morning, we can't say we didn't see it coming. Apple last tweaked the Xserve hardware in December 2009, and we observed in July of this year that the Xserve was getting a little long in the tooth. It's clear that Apple wasn't kidding when it recently said in its quarterly conference call that its main focus is consumers, so farewell Xserve. Have fun crunching data in that giant enterprise server farm in the sky.