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Apple Introduces Xserve Rackmount Servers
Posted by
pudge
on Tue May 14, 2002 12:44 PM
from the better-late-than-never dept.
from the better-late-than-never dept.
2nd Post! writes "MacCentral is reporting the announcement of 1U Apple rackmount hardware. The Xserve, despite its cheesy name, seems quite powerful: dual G4/1GHz with 4MB DDR L3 cache, up to 2GB DDR (yes!) SDRAM, 4 ATA drive bays (up to 480GB), 2 Gb Ethernet ports, 2 64/66 PCI slots (one of which may be taken up by one Gb Ethernet card), and, of course, FireWire. Pricing starts at $2,999 for a single 60GB disk and 256MB RAM." Yahoo! has posted the press release; Doc Searls is writing about Jobs' speech. Update: 05/14 18:14 GMT by M : Apple's page about the Xserve is now live.
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Apple Introduces Xserve Rackmount Servers
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Re:Problems with XServe hardware. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Problems with XServe hardware. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Problems with XServe hardware. (Score:5, Informative)
Apple's RAM is always overpriced, just like most OEMs. So you buy extra RAM 3rd party, as usual.
IDE just as fast as SCSI my ass
True, but Ultra3 is an obvious expansion option.
No expansion slots. The second gigabit network card takes up the only PCI slot
I'm not sure where you got that idea. The press release says: "three PCI slots, two of which are 64-bit, 66 MHz". I have no clue how they fit 3 PCIs and 4 bays into a 1U box, but I sure am glad.
Re:Problems with XServe hardware. (Score:5, Informative)
Windows 2000 Advanced Server with 25 Client Licenses [add $3295]
VersaRails for Non-Dell 4-Post Rack [add $129]
Dell Remote Assistant Card Version 3 without Modem [add $499]
73GB 10K RPM Ultra 160 SCSI Hard Drive [add $550]
Intel Pro 1000XT Gigabit NIC-Copper [add $189]
Total cost - $6,459.00
But maybe you wanted Linux - $3,323.00
I won't really get into the who SCSI/IDE debate, suffice to say Apple announced a Fibre Raid with 400MB through put, it you really want it. Shipping in Q4 with 1.48 TB of space in a 3U, all hot swappable. The Apple prices are spot on for all the features they bring. IMHO of course.
Re:Problems with XServe hardware. (Score:4, Informative)
In many places in both the Linux (2.4/2.5) and Darwin kernel's (depending on the device drivers), both will fail to preempt themselves for a userland task. (Yes, Virginia, there are chunks of code even Darwin won't preempt) Likewise, in many places (even in extremely old versions of the linux kernel), preemption can happen. You would be correct to say that there is a focus in 2.5 for trying to eliminate or optimize a lot of the non-preemptable code and to say that Darwin experiences marginally lower average latency than Linux 2.4, but to use that as some way to measure system performance is as ridiculous as it is stupid.
Besides, if you want to get super technical, there are two robust and stable implementations of Posix realtime threads for linux (RTAI and RTLinux) that have existed for a number of years. Darwin has no such beast. Now we are talking latencies of 10-15 microseconds vs the low-millisecond ranges of either Darwin or Linux 2.4/2.5
And if you want to get even further into the technical mumbo-jumbo, the ARM processor can rock both the PPC and the X86 in terms of preemption. There are event's called FIQ's (Fast IRQ) on ARM that cause the processor itself to preempt ITSELF and execute some other code! You can call efficient FIQ code on the order of 10MHz and still run your normal stuff on top of the CPU -- and on Linux too -- on top of RTAI Posix RT threads -- or not!
Oh, and Intel makes the best ARM cores, too. Yeah and they have 32 bit registers just like your 64/128bit PPC's.
Re:Problems with XServe hardware. (Score:4, Informative)
Have I installed secure Apache? No, it comes installed. have I set one up? Yes and takes 1 minute to configure a website and 3 minutes to configure a secure one. Right out of the box - that's why it's easier.
Have I installed Tomcat? No, it comes installed - well and older version does. Played with it - not interested. Will install newer version if/when I want to.
Postgres? No, but I played with pre-installed MySQL - 2 minutes to turn on and use. Upgraded to later version (to fix BLOB>255 bug) and continued to run it. That did take more than 5 minutes. Maybe 15? You can downlaod source and install or get binary images and install them if you want the latest version.
I can get an application server up and running for much less than a WebObjects/Oracle solution.
Yes you can. I NEVER said you couldn't. Not everyone is you. Some people want that solution and here's a product that supplies it.
On Mac but preferably on Linux/Intel for hardware cost reasons - hell I provide SCSI RAID
Again, not everyone is you. This is exactly my point: Apple offers a product. People seem offended by it's very existence. When was the last time you heard someone say, "Why does BMW even make or sell cars?" Because people buy them.
I can do cheaper/differently/blah blah blah And now that Apple offers this product you still can. Here's an idea: If you don't want it - don't buy it.
=tkk
PS XServe will do RAID - software RAID as is or add SCSI/RAID with a PCI card. From the Apple BTO store. Go check it out.
Re:Problems with XServe hardware. (Score:4, Interesting)
they did the biggest Webcast ever (Steve Jobs keynote)
they did the biggest download ever (Star Wars trailers)
over 4000 schools do all of their administration on Apple's PowerSchool software, which is hosted on servers at Apple
Apple.com is in the top 5 or 10 most-visited computer Web sites
Apple Store Online is in the top 5 e-tailers
all the computers at each and every Apple retail store have their hard disks wiped and restored to default from a server at Apple every day
Apple has been using Mac OS X Server internally for years and years (it was released in early 1999), and they have a lot of UNIX tradition in there, so their internal network is probably aching for these boxes
Apple's iTools Web services are very popular
Every Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X installation includes Apple's Software Update, which checks for updates to included software and automatically downloads and installs patches and updates (after getting the user's permission, of course) to keep the clients current
That's a lot of serving, you know? They're going to be able to show this stuff off on their own projects, show what it costs them to serve the biggest Webcast with Xserve and QuickTime Streaming Server and no per-stream fees, or how they keep millions of Mac clients up-to-date, and it's going to be a very compelling solution for any company that also does anything like the above list of things that Apple does with servers.
There are going to be a lot of places where a rack of these will be in a small room somewhere and everybody uses PowerBooks to access the server over Wi-Fi or Gigabit Ethernet.
All Power Macs and PowerBooks have Gigabit Ethernet
Also keep in mind that all the new stuff announced for Mac OS X "Jaguar" this summer will apply to these Xserves. Apple's Rendevous is ZeroConf networking, for example. And I don't get why so many Slashdot posts seem to think that having FireWire on your 1u server is a bad idea
Wet Dream Come True (Score:4, Funny)
Apple sleek hardware + 1U Rack Mount Server + Kick Ass Unix with the sweetest GUI on the market + Gigabit Ethernet + Unlimited Client License included
*Faints*
I feel like a 12-year-old girl at a Backstreet Boys concert.
*Screams*
Re: with the sweetest GUI on the market (Score:5, Funny)
What, am I the only one who wants to have a rack of these and a kvm switch built into his desk?
Re:Wet Dream Come True (Score:5, Funny)
I really hate to nit-pick, but shouldn't you *scream* before you *faint*?
BTW: I agree, these are pretty cool systems. I'm amazed that Apple didn't release a rack mount system years ago (and, hence, that we are impressed by this introduction).
Top500 time? (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of us snickered when Apple pitched the G4 as a "supercomputer" (using the technical export definition), but if folks like Genentech build racks of these, clustered, and land in the top 10% of the Top500 list, Steve and company will be the ones laughing.
Let's see... the *bottom* of the Top500 list is currently a 116-CPU Cray T3E 1200, with a theoretical peak of about 139 GFlops... you'd only need enough Xserves to fill 1/4 of a rack to come up with that kind of power.
Okay, okay, I guess I want some too.
$2999 is for 1 Proc (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Pretty powerful... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pretty powerful... (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a RAID box, IDE drives, Fibre channel backhaul....
Apple is doing alot right... IDE veruses SCSI - IDE is right for what they're doing (small servers), on the RAID box, I'd go SCSI. I think as they build out thier server lines, they'll build some with SCSI some with IDE...
IDE can be as fast as SCSI, but you can't get 15K RPM IDE drives, you can with SCSI, and SCSI drives are assumed to be run 24x7, IDE isn't... (Although that doesn't mean IDE drives can't last as long, just SCSI drives are designed for more use)...
So the Sun/SGI/whatever rumors are dying now (Score:3, Interesting)
BTW Why did they choose ATA drives over SCSI?
Imagine a Beo-- (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Imagine a Beo-- (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Needs a better name (Score:4, Funny)
forgot to mention the 3U version (Score:5, Informative)
* 14 drive bays
* 14 120GB ATA drives - in same hot-plug format as Xserve
* 1.68TB
* Dual 2GB Fibre Channel on system
* 400MB/second storage throughput
RAID is all about data protection -- all critical components are redundant. Dual RAID controllers -- drives, power, cooling -- all redundant. 14 independent hard drives, and each RAID controller connects to seven of them. Each has an independent ATA controller that goes to the heart of the system. 128MB processor cache in the RAID processor. Redundant drive cache, redundant fans. Will be Available by the end of calendar year 2002.
Re:forgot to mention the 3U version (Score:5, Funny)
Thats all well and good, but........ (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thats all well and good, but........ (Score:4, Funny)
Proper mice have three buttons.
Yea, when counting the bottons of mice, thou shalt count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy ... er ... ah ...
never mind
with [abosolutly no] appologies to the Python crew
Re:Did They Fix the Filename Problem Yet? (Score:5, Informative)
- porting: Most packages compile out of the bag or with very little in the way of patching (a lot only require a couple of command line arguments. Fink.sourceforge.net currently has 1100 packages 'ported' to OS X, all fully managed by the debian package manager.
Fink has certainly grown in size since your purchase, but not much else has changed.
As James Gosling recently said: "OS X is like Linux, only with Q/A [Quality Assurance] and taste!".
Re:Did They Fix the Filename Problem Yet? (Score:4, Informative)
That I can see, I guess...
But you returned it (eating the 10% fee) before taking the 30 seconds it would have taken you to find out that the traditional *nix filesystem was an available option?
That's just stupid.
For the record, if you don't like HFS+, you can use UFS. Also if you don't like tcsh, you can install bash (free download from Stallman & co.). If you took a deep breath, calmed down, and did a quick visit to any of thousands of web sites that were chattering about this stuff at the time, you could have found all this out. For that matter, if you had bothered to look into it before buying a $1200 laptop, you would have known all this going in.
Oracle 9i Too! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oracle 9i Too! (Score:5, Funny)
Oracle...low cost
Future releases...on-time
one step forward, two steps back? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I'm disappointed. Everything else about this looks really nice, obviously.
Hm, thinking about famous systems that use IDE drives...think they're trying to appeal to Google [google.com]?
Re:No RAID in the low end model? (Score:4, Informative)
It's gotta be said... (Score:5, Funny)
*dodges hurled items*
power usage (Score:5, Insightful)
From apple's site: Typical continuous power: 125W (single-processor system); 175W (dual processor system).
On a desktop, this doesn't make that huge of a difference, but when you fill a room full of these rackmounts, the electricity savings quickly being to add up. Then you can figure in cooling costs. Lower power consumption results in less generated heat and far lower cooling bills.
Re:power usage - rule of thumb (Score:5, Informative)
The savings may not be too large. I checked an Athlon system with an ammeter recently. It came in at 120W with one drive in it while doing its server tasks. So, they at least are in the same ballpark. (The measurement techniques are surely different, I would not claim one was higher than the other based on this data. Just that they are near each other.)
Power is one of the reasons I suggest people not use that crappy old 486 or pentium as a NAT/firewall box in their house unless they are doing it for joy. In about a year or so of electricity savings you can pay for one of the new integrated appliances and enjoy increased reliablity and savings in the following years.
Blinkenlights (Score:5, Funny)
It comes with Blinkenlights for the two processor, just like the good old BeBox
That alone is worth $4k
P.S.:These machines actually cluster. Now imagine a rack full of clustered 1U G4s, all with psychedelic Blinkenlights showing activity.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
A cheaper 1U AMD based server box with FreeBSD or Slackware may be cheaper and just as easy to administer for you and I (and most of the
Re:I don't get it - for me, quality (Score:5, Interesting)
The last batch of 6 1U x86 rackmount servers I bought from one of the largest PC manufacturers came with misprogrammed APICs that made them unable to run Linux without spending several days on hackery to get them going. The PCI slots are still useless, they can't deliver interrupts, but the rest of the machine works. I shuttled machines around so they don't need their PCI slots. (This machine was not purchased with Windows, it was a no-OS machine.) Two of these machines have failed in the 6 months that I have owned them.
The previous batch of 2U servers I purchased had a whiz-bang scsi controller that displayed a linux allergy and took me weeks of trying pre-release patches and waiting to get a linux version that worked acceptably. I still have to build custom kernels for these machines when I upgrade.
The biggest problem I have purchasing PC hardware is there is no good way to tell what is "server grade" and what has cheaped out components in the power supply or capacitors that will cause their MTBF to suffer. The extreme price pressure always tempts the manufacturers to cut corners.
So, the attactions...
Ok, they cost about 30% more than the servers I have been buying (and certainly outperforms them, but that is irrelevant, my servers are low cpu users). I'll take that. It vanishes in the unbilled hours dealing with mystery hardware and having to buy a bunch of spare machines to count on being able to replace a machine when needed.
Re:How is $6,341 better than $4000? (Score:4, Insightful)
> a _VERY_ limited subset of code in general.
That happens to include audio and video processing and encoding, 3D rendering, biotech computing, encryption, and other very hip tasks for which people want more computational power these days. And yes, Apple's customers do this on servers (eg. a Web server that creates graphical maps from a database, encodes live audio or video and streams it, or processes a master movie file into lower bitrate versions for certain clients, etc.) Will Altivec speed up Microsoft Word? No. Does it need speeding up on today's machines? Not usually. But Altivec is heavily used by apps that run on PPC and need juice and it shouldn't be discounted like it's Intel's MME or something. People who know Altivec love Altivec, let's put it that way.
10.1.5 (Score:5, Informative)
its in the management graphic. i want that too
Apple's defense of ATA (Score:5, Informative)
The ATA drive subsystem has a high-bandwidth I/O bus that minimizes bottlenecks, even when all four drives are engaged at once. That's how Xserve can achieve a theoretical peak performance of up to 266 megabytes per second, compared to a 160MB/s theoretical performance with SCSI Ultra160 disk drives -- at a significantly lower cost, and while generating less heat than SCSI drives.
Great differentiator (Score:5, Insightful)
If I understand correctly, this is a signficant differentiator between Apple's offerings and companies providing Windows XP on their servers. This is because the hardware OEM would have to negotiate a great deal with Microsoft to do a similar "unlimited deal". Either that, or they'd have to absorb the costs, an unlikely scenario.
Of course, the hardware OEM could install Linux instead, but we all know that Microsoft generally frowns on OEMs picking between Windows and Linux:
Source was eWeek [eweek.com], March 18, 2002.
So, if Apple sees any sort of success with Xserve, you'll probably see the other OEMs putting pressure on Microsoft to let them offer Linux or at least reduce their Windows licensing fees, meaning more, cheaper choices for the customers.
I guess competition is good after all.
What the fuck is Apple smoking? (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's see here:
The 280R has dual redundant power supplies, can have up to 4 CPUs, gigabytes more memory, is SCSI-based, and, since it's 5RU, has a ton more expandability.
The main comparison point Apple chose to use? Available disk bays, and price. Who do they think they're fooling when they claim that an IDE-based XServer will be comparable to a $20k enterprise-ready server?
Man, the crack in Cupertino must be good.
- A.P.
Re:What the fuck is Apple smoking? (Score:4, Informative)
The 280R is a single- or dual-proc Ultrasparc-III, supports up to 8GB of RAM, and supports up to two FC-AL (yes, fibrechannel, not SCSI) drives internally, along with one external FC-AL connector and I think four PCI slots. It's 4U, not 5. It also has a remote management card which provides LOM-like features (poweron, poweroff, etc.).
And I think it starts at about $12k, and if you want the dual-proc, it's more like $20k. I don't think Apple ever said this would beat a 280r in all categories, but I would say (as someone who has been building and maintaining Sun boxes for years) that this box compares quite favorably with actually competitive offerings: Windows on Intel.
It does, of course, still lose in most areas against the 280R, but only if you are a company who would benefit from the Sun box. If you are a school, or a small creative shop, or even a big creative shop, or any shop which already has lots of OS X and no Solaris, this is the box for you.
Re:What the fuck is Apple smoking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm, for $20K I can buy 5 dual processor Apple Servers and fit them in the same 5 Us of rack space. That's 10 CPUs, 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, 5 unit redundancy, 10 GBs of RAM and space for 2.4 TBs of HD...
What was your point again?
Re:What the fuck is Apple smoking? (Score:4, Interesting)
Bill Gates: insists on control of the OS industry. Why? Not definative, but theoreticaly he want's a universal standard of operations on computers.
James Cameron (think Terminator and Titanic): Known as being a very demending director who knows and insists on having what he wants. The result is a stream of rather sucessful movies.
Steve Jobs: Until he came back, Apple was floundering because they were trying to please everyone and offer everything. This was simply dumping money and killing the business. Jobs came back and had insisted on direct control over the mac. Ergo, end of clones and only 3 or 4 options per group of macs.
Control is not a bad thing. Abuse is a bad thing.
BTW, using a mac and using a PC are two very different experiences, give it a try one day and you might be suprised.
Posted anonymously to prevent the same smiting of my account
You'll take the credit for posting that which is in accordance with the opinions of moderators and the majority (goodthink), but you will hide behind a viel of anonmminity when you are going to be contrary. Coward.
A haiku (Score:5, Funny)
just 1U so powerful
I think I have wood
Xcellent AV solution ! (Score:4, Informative)
Since the production work is mostly done on Macs it makes perfect sense to use a Mac server.
Cost of hardware has always been secondary to quality of workflow and consistency in delivering the end product. (meaning: the shit should just work! and it should work the way you'd expect)
Face it, we pay THOUSANDS for audio cards and video equipment. We are not home "tinkerers" and dont want to tinker with our servers.
If these Xservers can also double as workstations 2 birds go down with one stone.
Windows admins and Linux hobbiests will never get it.
Go Apple !
Pixar (Score:3, Interesting)
Here are some pics I took at the event... (Score:3, Informative)
Not as fast connection [zawodny.com]
People who will buy this (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice to see that Apple has finally introduced DDR. means that this will trickle down to the desktop sonner or later.
serial console port == nice touch (Score:3, Interesting)
More evidence .... (Score:3, Insightful)
On the Design Page: [apple.com]
"Fits in with what's out there:
"Xserve fits into all types of industry-standard racks, so you can use what you already have or buy new racks "off-the-rack" to meet your specific needs. There's no need for a special "Apple rack."
Xserve supports racks that meet the specifications of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)/Electronic Industries Association (EIA) standard ANSI/EIA-310-D, International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 297, and Deutsche Industrie Norm (DIN) 41494. You can install the server in any of several types of racks, including: open four-post rack (19 inches wide and 29 -- 36 inches deep), cabinet with four-post rack inside (19 inches wide and 29 -- 36 inches deep), and two-post telco rack (19 inches wide).
I think this new attitude -- along with the list of nice features -- will go over well here in higher ed. I'm considering getting one of these and putting it in our co-location center. I've used the Server Admin on my in-house G4 server, and it's great for remote admin, too. But all of the admin tools alone would sell me over a different brand. A Linux 1U would be cheaper initially, but it costs something in time to maintain, too. I don't have the time and resources to hire a sys admin. I've got to do that myself, and it's not a lot of fun. This would be perfect.
Where to start??? (Score:3, Interesting)
2) Thats a server, woah! They *look* good.Blue PCB inside, sweet metal stylings outside, i know that i should not look at these things and think it is good or anything like that, but i can not help myself.
3) Cooling: This is my only concern, they do not appear to have a decent air intake system at the front of the rack, to cool the internal componantry.Sure the G4 is relatively cool, but there are the HDDs and 48 of them in a stack would be a lot of heat.
4)Comparable to PC offerings. At lest our new racks we are purchasing in the next few weeks are only PIII 1.3G machines, the speed differences of these new apple servers are negligable. To what it used to be
I think that it will be most interesting to see how much penetration into the rack-space market share apple are able to achieve.