New guy stuff and mac servering

Halp! I am new to these forums, so "Hi" and I am sorry if I am posting this in a naughty place.

I used mac once, way back during system 7 days. Titled backgrounds, pretty stuff, and trash bin 'lou' hacks. Anyways, being a young and budding programmer, I fell more into PC land. Utilizing Windows and Linux to code was certainly a better move.

Now-a-days, I am a nix guy, and gainfully employed in a Mac shop. I purchased my wife a macBook pro about 6 months ago, and I am looking at piecing together a hackintosh of sorts here.

I initially signed up here to ask this question though - With the Xserves being retired, what am I able to look at in the way of getting a mac server up and rocking. I am more than comfortable with technology as a whole - I am just wondering what is the best way to go.

I am looking for Apples answer to fill the need for a Mac VM unit - responsible for running several Linux guests. This would be a production quality server. I was toying with the idea of building up a MAC PRO - buying the model with best processor and MOBO for the job and manually updating what I need to (too keep an eye on costs).

The second machine is a mail/everything else server to use internally. I believe we have purchased a mac mini for this route - it was simple, clean, and to the point.

Although nobody seems to know exactly when, the Mac Pros are dead-certain to get an update this year (to add Thunderbolt, as well as newer processors and perhaps a long-overdue makeover), so I can't in good conscience recommend a Mac Pro server unit at the moment, but can't say when the new ones will be available.

The Mac minis are likely to get updated this week or next, so that's another option for you.

Chas_m,

Thank you for that. I just got the email about the new Mac Minis. Go figure, a week after we ordered ourselves a new one. Thanks for the advice on the mac pro server. We may actually just go Mac Mini all the way - I am very impressed with the power usage, the low heat output, and the overall ingenuity of the thing.

So would running a server farm of mac mini's be my answer? haha. I mean, the new one just came out, looks impressive. And it really could do a decent job running 3 virtualized LAMP stack environments - I am sure. I worry about the ram capacity in this case. But my interest is certainly peaked.