Proxmox Web GUI: https://ambrosia.schleppe:8006

In the ancient Greek myths, ambrosia (/æmˈbroʊziə, -ʒə/) is the food or drink of the Greek gods, and is often depicted as conferring longevity or immortality upon whoever consumed it.

Ambrosia is a IO heavy machine providing large storage, GPU's & high frequency CPU cores for whoever wishes to consume it! 

It is also a heavily modified Xserve RAID machine with custom PCB's for making IO status lights and drive caddies fully working. Check out the xserver project pages.

Hardware

Hard drives

(last updated 11.05.2025)

Xserve

This server is built into a piece of Apple history, bringing new upgradable hardware to the steel cabinet using custom PCB's to re-enable front IO and drive caddie functionality. Check out the linked project pages above. 

View user guide: XserveRAID_UserGuide.PDF 

History

The Xserve was a series of rack-mounted servers manufactured by Apple Inc. between 2002 and 2011. It was Apple's first rack-mounted server,[1] and could function as a file server, web server or run high-performance computing applications in clusters.

Xserve RAID held up to 14 hot-swappable Ultra-ATA hard drives, and had a capacity of 10.5 TB when filled with 750 GB modules. Xserve RAID supported RAID levels of 0, 0+1, 1, 3 and 5 in hardware, hybrid RAID levels such as 10 and 50 could be created in software.^[1] It was rack-mountable and was 3U high.^[1]

Although the Xserve RAID contained 14 drives, they were split into two independent groups of 7 drives each managed by an identical RAID controller. Importantly, the controllers were independent, but not redundant; each managed seven of the storage array's fourteen drives, given a failure of one of the controllers those 7 drives were not accessible: the other could not take over its duties. Xserve RAID did, however, have redundant cooling units and power supplies. Xserve RAID's ports were two Fibre Channel ports for regular data transfer, a 10/100Ethernet port for remote management, and a serial port for UPS communication via the Simple Signaling Protocol.

Xserve RAID was available in models costing between US$5,999 and US$10,999^[2][3] (later US$12,999),^[4][5] plus configuration and support options.

The Xserve RAID was discontinued on February 19, 2008.^[6]

Purchase

I finally found the iconic Apple servers locally without a multi thousand dollar price tag. The previous owner worked with Sound and Lights rigging for a friends company where his hours were flexible and he traveled a lot for work. He had gotten info about a old paper publisher getting rid of these machines. It looked like they mostly used the easily deployable smb and webpage services Xserve provided. 

I met the seller at his parents house at Løren who were the sweetest old Polish couple that were more concerned about covid then getting rid of these extremely loud servers that were stacked in their basement stairs. I think they offered me to stay for supper at one point.

References

• XWiki
• XWiki Extensions