My school district department was fortunate enough to be able to purchase two xServes recently. Upon setting them up at the end of last week, we were frustrated because the USB ports weren't working at all, and we weren't in the mood to set them up headless. We were about to send them back when our local Apple System Engineer let us in on the secret: If the removeable drive bays are locked, the USB & Firewire ports are disabled.
I'm sure Apple had a security issue in mind when they did this, but it immediately brings up two thoughts in my mind.
- Why isn't this well documented? I felt like I had committed an id10t error, but looking back why WOULD I have known this?
- We have these hooked to a KVM switch along with other servers. We can't lock the drive bays and use the KVM switch at the same time. Solution: Get a fancy silver chain to put the xServ drive bay key on and wear it around your neck so that you don't have to fish around for it when you run to your server rack.

