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Technology (Apple) Businesses Apple Technology

Apple Introduces Xserve Rackmount Servers 771

Posted by pudge 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 More

Apple Introduces Xserve Rackmount Servers

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  • Wet Dream Come True (Score:4, Funny)

    by 0101000001001010 ( 466440 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @01:46PM (#3518432)
    OMG

    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:Wet Dream Come True (Score:5, Funny)

      by First Person ( 51018 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @01:57PM (#3518532)

      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)

      by dbirchall ( 191839 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @04:25PM (#3519710) Journal
      Yeah, those are pretty nice specs. It gets a little more interesting when you take that theoretical peak performance of 630 GFlops for a rack of these babies and look at the most recent Top500 [top500.org] list.

      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.

  • They've got a 3U, dual fiber channel, 14 drive RAID Xserver in the works. Keep a lookout for those ;)

  • $2999 is for 1 Proc (Score:4, Informative)

    by johnpg ( 204191 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @01:47PM (#3518440)
    The original specs are wrong, it's $2999 for the SINGLE 1 GHz G4, $3999 for the dual. Not as sweet a deal, but still not too bad.

  • Pretty powerful... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Justen ( 517232 )
    I imagine this is going to be a hit with universities, especially those that already use Macintosh client units.

    I think the RAID server that they announced (not shipping until later) will be pretty hot, too...

    - 3U height
    - 14 bays
    - Fourteen 120 gB ATA drives (hot pluggable)
    - 1.68 tB
    - dual 2GB Fibre Channel on system
    - 400 mB/second storage throughput

    At $3,000, this is a fairly good solution. I just wonder what this "repair kit" will include??

    jrbd

    • Re:Pretty powerful... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MoneyT ( 548795 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @02:07PM (#3518633) Journal
      At $3,000 maybe I should buy one of these things for my next computer instead of that TiBook. BTW, for those of you students (college or otherwise out there) sign up for Apple's student developer package ($99) and get a once in a lifetime discount on Apple hardware good for up to 20% off whatever you buy. Knocks the high end TiBook down from 3,800 to 3,000. I wonder what it would do for the rackmount?

    • Re:Pretty powerful... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by trippd6 ( 20793 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @02:13PM (#3518683) Homepage
      Its not a RAID server, its a external storage unit, you'll need to plug into a server... using the fibre channel connections...

      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)...
    • I think the RAID server that they announced (not shipping until later) will be pretty hot, too...3U height...

      Just to reiterate, this is not a 3U server, this is a 3U storage unit. No processors (except RAID controllers), just hard drives. It is a "companion product" to the 1U G4 server.

  • So the Sun/SGI/whatever rumors are dying now (Score:3, Interesting)

    by line-bundle ( 235965 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @01:48PM (#3518454) Homepage Journal
    So does that mean the constant rumour of Apple buying (or bought by) Sun/SGI/whatnot will die now? Clearly Apple can make its own servers.

    BTW Why did they choose ATA drives over SCSI?
    • But look at Apple's target markets:
      Education, Creative, Biotech, Video. Are these markets people that want to rely on IT and support? I don't think Apple is competing against Sun or SGI. Seems pretty clear they are offering a UNIX alternative for people who don't want to have to know UNIX to me.

      Certainly no big challenge to large database companies nor Windows Enterprises.
    • Cost. SCSI costs much more, meaning a higher price. However, it wouldn't have been a bad idea to include a built in SCSI interface.

    • ATA over SCSI (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Pfhor ( 40220 )
      For the price, this is amazing. the box has two 64bit/66mhz slots in it, which could probably fit two dual channel scsi160 (or 320) controller cards in it.

      It's a 1U case, if I was going to do massive storage intensive tasks on it, I would plug it into a hardware raid. Like the Lacie TX12000 system, http://www.lacie.com/products/product.cfm?id=4A867 A58-54C8-11D5-97C60090278D3ED0

      Which is rackmountable, and handles all the aspects of the raid itself. That way, if the server breaks, I can remove it, put a new one in its place, and keep going. (Servers support netbooting now, so I wouldn't have to change configuration). For the education / science / lets get work done crowd, this is an awesome benefit.

      Since storage capacity is essential, and you can raid the drives, why not put ATA in there? Instead of scsi. If you need scsi do the above, and put them in a box dedicated to handle them.

      Oh, and the machines all have RS232 ports on em.

  • Imagine a Beo-- (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @01:48PM (#3518457)
    ---oh nevermind........ ;^)

  • It needs a better name. Maybe "MacRack?" "Rack of Mac?" How about "iRack?"

  • forgot to mention the 3U version (Score:5, Informative)

    by jerrytcow ( 66962 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @01:50PM (#3518471) Homepage
    * 3U height
    * 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.

  • Thats all well and good, but........ (Score:5, Funny)

    by curtisk ( 191737 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @01:52PM (#3518490) Homepage Journal
    >> 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." Yes,Yes, but does the mouse have one button or two!?

    • Re:Thats all well and good, but........ (Score:4, Funny)

      by gaj ( 1933 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @04:51PM (#3519863) Homepage Journal
      For Bob's sake, don't you kids know anything?

      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

  • Oracle 9i Too! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rgraham ( 199829 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @01:54PM (#3518508) Homepage
    This wasn't mentioned in the press release but seems like a pretty big deal and come from the MacCentral coverage: "Introduces Mike Rocha, senior vice president, Platform Tech, Oracle: Oracle 9i on OS X -- we very excited about this hardware. Oracle is about low-cost clustering. Future releases will be on-time, synchronous. When we use UNIX native support, native APIs, optimized for this hardware, we can synchronize our releases so that our customers can have unified database versions across different hardware platforms. "

  • one step forward, two steps back? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tps12 ( 105590 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @02:02PM (#3518579) Homepage Journal
    I can't believe it. Apple finally emerges from the stone age and leaves PC100 RAM behind, and sticks IDE drives in a server case.

    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]?

    • Just recently there was a study saying that ATA was better than SCSI in almost every situation these days ... it's very hard to overcome the huge cheap ATA drives. In this case, Apple is not really just using ATA ... each ATA drive has its own controller all to itself ... so instead of two SCSI drives on one controller giving you 140GB total, you have four ATA drives on four ATA controllers, giving you 480GB total, and the ATA stuff cost a lot less, too. Then you put in 10 1u servers each with four ATA drives and all hooked up with Gigabit Ethernet and you're probably getting some pretty good performance there.

      Also, Apple can make optimizations to Mac OS X Server in order to gain more performance out of Xserve and ATA drives ... they have flexibility to make that work where other companies might be using someone else's kernel, or running Windows and just taking whatever they get there.
  • The IDE drives worry me. Sure IDE is getting fast, but good SCSI drives are still faster. Also, IDE drives don't seem to have the reliability that SCSI drives do. Desktop drives fail all the time, but we rarely have good SCSI drives fail.

    • Re:IDE (Score:3, Informative)

      by slyfox ( 100931 )
      Looking at the technical specs, it appears that each drive has its own controller. To quote from Apple's site [apple.com]:

      "Each drive has an independent Ultra ATA/100 bus, an arrangement that allows maximum individual drive performance without choking the throughput of the other drives. SCSI is better than IDE when controlling multiple disks. Apple must have done that math and figured 4 IDE controllers and with IDE drives had a better price/performance than a SCSI-based system."

      I also don't think that IDE support hot swapping as well as SCSI. However, It looks like having a controller per disk also allows Apple to get around this (the new servers do support hot-swap drives). They probably just shut down the entire IDE controller for the drive to allow hot swapping.

      All in all, I think these new servers look very cool.

  • What a rip off. Where I work everything except some insignificant stuff is on at least RAID 1. Why would I go the Apple route when I can get a server form Dell or Compaq with SCSI RAID for less? My company is Win2000, but Dell and Compaq also support Linux on servers. Another Apple rip off.

    • Re:No RAID in the low end model? (Score:4, Informative)

      by smagoun ( 546733 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @02:19PM (#3518725) Homepage
      OSX supports software RAID, even at the consumer level. Put in 2 or more disks, and you can stripe/mirror all you want. The new servers have 4 independent IDE channels...it's a safe bet that you'll be able to set up a RAID. Maybe not RAID 5, but that's what you buy the forthcoming fiber channel storage device for. In any case, how is built-in RAID a rip-off?
      • This is an important point which often gets glossed over. OS X can take two drives and make them RAID 1 but it can't boot off it. That means even with this Xserve you can't have disk redundancy for your OS. OS's drive fails, server goes kerplunk.

        This is what I want - I want my OS on a RAID 1 and my data on a separate RAID 1 or RAID 5. If any drive fails I want the system to keep going, keep providing access to the data and I want it to let me know a drive failed via blinkenlights and by email (my pager has email). If it doesn't have its own email alert, I want it to execute the program of my choice or log it to a file so I can use a script or cron+script to make my own email alert.

        I want this in a system which costs around $5000, provides at least 8GB for the OS disk and 30GB for data. I don't need a 14 bay array which will probably cost $3000 before you even add any drives to it. I need to set up an OS X file server this summer. I don't need a blazing processor or even blazing disk performance. I need reliability, redundancy and monitorability (I think I made up that word).

        I can get this for Windows 2000 Server from many sources (with hardware RAID and hotswap drives, something I don't really need).
        • This is *so* making my day! I didn't find this on their info pages, I found it from the "learn more" page in the Apple Store for the drive bays.
          "Mac OS X Server includes AppleRAID, providing RAID 0 and 1 support through software, allowing you to increase either data redundancy or performance. Xserve is able to boot from RAID volumes. Choose any combination of mirroring or striping across the four drive bays, but all RAID configurations require a minimum of two ADM hard drives."
          Also, it looks like the management software [apple.com] will provide the monitoring and notification I want.

          1GHz CPU, 4 60GB disks (as 2 RAID 1 drives), AppleCare for $3,889.00 (.edu price) Whoo-hoo!


    • You say you can get a server from Dell with RAID for less, and you run Win2000?

      Hmmm. Since Win2000 will charge you $3295 for unlimited users, that means you must be able to get a Dell for $605? I looked on the Dell website and couldn't find a $605 server.

      Oh, and the Xserve DOES have raid.

      Seriously, you run Windows, you pay the user tax and you're concerned about cost- when your user tax is almost as much as the complete server from Apple?

      This is a really competitive server from a hardware standpoint. When you include the software costs (and you did since you run Win2000) there is no comparison.

      Your alternative is at least twice the cost (And when I go to the Dell website their servers are a lot more expensive than the Xserve for less CPU horsepower and multiple-rack units.)

  • It's gotta be said... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Moonshadow ( 84117 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @02:07PM (#3518629)
    Nice rack.

    *dodges hurled items*

  • power usage (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tantalus ( 466821 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @02:15PM (#3518698) Homepage
    This may not be immediately obvious, but the low power requirements of the g4 chip can provide a big advantage here.

    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)

      by victim ( 30647 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @03:23PM (#3519215)
      As a ballpark figure, 1 watt turned on all year costs you $1. Maybe double that if you are in a continuously air conditioned environment like a machine room.

      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)

    by 0101000001001010 ( 466440 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @02:15PM (#3518700)
    I think we missed the most important part of the server.

    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.

  • I've used OS X now for several weeks at work. It is good enough that when it is time for a laptop, I'm going to take a serious look at getting a Powerbook.

    However, what is the point of a Mac server? I don't see any advantage to OS X Server over Linux, and x86 hardware is still cheaper and has better performance than PPC hardware.

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)

      by djfern ( 555365 )
      the point of a mac server? for those in education, it's a no-brainer to use - especially compared to Windows NT / 2000.

      for Video and graphics, it means you can rackmount these puppies and use them as a rendering farm almost right out of the box.

      And for design houses, it's an easy way to adminster a network, set up file and sharing services, etc..

      Is it going to run amazon.com? Nope. That's not the market.

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FatRatBastard ( 7583 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @02:45PM (#3518902) Homepage
      You don't (and frankly neither do I) but I can see quite a few people who do. I don't think the hardware is going to be the selling issue here (although they'll want it to be solid and somewhat competitive) but the administration tools. I can only speculate from what has been written and past remote admin software from Apple, but I bet the selling point will be how easy it is to administer the things. With any luck they'll do to server administration what they did to the Unix desktop, i.e. make it easy.

      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 /. crowd) but for things like schools, graphics departments, etc. this could *potentially* free up administration costs since you don't have to have a unix propeller head around part or all of the time.

    • Re:I don't get it - for me, quality (Score:5, Interesting)

      by victim ( 30647 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @03:44PM (#3519375)
      For me, having a quality hardware product with a reasonably secure OS that just works on it is the attraction.

      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...
      • Apple (with a couple of stunning counterexamples (AppleIII, first Airports, some monitors)) was an outstanding reputation for making high grade hardware.
      • The OS is going to work correctly on the hardware.
      • If I like the machine, I will be able to order more identical machines 6 months later.
      • I will not be rolling the dice to see if my OS will run on the new hardware.
      • The firewire ports will work. Even with two processes hitting the same disk at the same time.


      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.
  • If you look closely at the Quicktime animation on the page describing the Server Management software [apple.com], one of the frames shows that the server is running Mac OS X Server 10.1.5.

  • 10.1.5 (Score:5, Informative)

    by paradesign ( 561561 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @02:27PM (#3518774) Homepage
    http://www.apple.com/xserve/management.html

    its in the management graphic. i want that too

  • Apple's defense of ATA (Score:5, Informative)

    by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @02:29PM (#3518782) Homepage Journal
    Take it or leave it. From their site:

    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)

    by sg3000 ( 87992 ) <sg_public AT mac DOT com> on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @02:34PM (#3518820)
    According to the web site, there are no per user fees:
    No per-user "taxes"

    Xserve lets you eliminate the most galling expense in your department's budget: the usurious per-user "tax" you've been obliged to pay for using server software. Since Xserve comes with an unlimited-client license of the UNIX-based, industrial-strength Mac OS X Server, you can serve thousands of additional users -- without spending thousands of additional dollars in licensing fees.


    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:

    Kuney introduced a Microsoft memo to Ballmer, from the spring of 2000, that called into question Dell Computer Corp.'s backing of Linux. The memo said it was "untenable that a Windows Premier Partner would be promoting 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.

    • XP Killer? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mcc ( 14761 )
      Exactly.. this is a pretty big deal. Between the whole "look, a server OS that a half-idiot can configure with reasonable licensing policies" thing and the tools that seem to provide remote administration done right (apple remote desktop and this crazy looking manager [apple.com] thing, apple seems to have suddenly gotten a bunch of stuff right that no one ever quite has before.

      I can only just hope and pray with all my might that apple doesn't let this opportunity slipt hrough their fingers. I mean, this isn't the most impressive box i've ever seen, esp. compared to some high-end UNIX setups, and traditional Unices probably still are more reliable and powerful for some stuff, but the tradeoffs you have to go through with this XServe are certainly no more unreasonable than the ones that early or even sometimes current versions of Windows NT make you go through. If Apple keeps developing this, and they *market* it, and they actually push this in those markets where this is actually something killer (all the ease of Windows NT without the bullshit, the constant reboots, the downtime, the requirements to buy like four redundant servers to make anything work, or the need foran MSCE) .. this could definitely turn into a real, credible threat to windows XP.

      And if this gets developed, it would be a very good thing for linux and UNIX in general, because anywhere that picks up this thing is going to be naturally gravitated toward J2EE and UNIX-based SQL software.. and after awhile, they'll begin to realize linux is a drop-in replacement in some places for this. Any mindshare that this Xserve thing picks up translates to instant mindshare for everything UNIX.. becuase that's just one more shop that has expertise in Apache, Perl, etc, instead of expertise in IIS, ASP, etc...

      Please, please, apple, don't fuck this one up. If they play your cards right, they could take over the world with this one. This could be the first step to making Macs seem usable or credible in a university/business environment.. if they can get a serious foothold with this.. i don't even know.

      This makes me incredibly, incredibly happy. It's very exciting. It's just too bad apple will probably not market it correctly and we'll wind up with something that just slips through the cracks and never catches on, another product that was technically neat but no one used. Now i just want to know how long it will take LinuxPPC to put together a bootable package for the XServe..

  • What the fuck is Apple smoking? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @02:35PM (#3518828) Homepage Journal
    They're positioning this server (according to MacWorld) against, among other things, Sun's 280R.

    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)

      by loosifer ( 314643 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @04:07PM (#3519583) Homepage
      Wow, umm, where to start? You have all of your information absolutely wrong (as does the post below yours), so I'll just explain what the 280R is and is not:

      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)

      by Macdude ( 23507 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @04:41PM (#3519811)
      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?


      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?

  • A haiku (Score:5, Funny)

    by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @02:43PM (#3518888)
    Apple's small server
    just 1U so powerful
    I think I have wood

  • Xcellent AV solution ! (Score:4, Informative)

    by ultraslide ( 267976 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @02:46PM (#3518906)
    Increasingly Audio/Video production is becoming de-centrelized to the point where editors and producers need to be able to work from a common source that addresses "thier" needs. Not the needs of gamers or SOHO admins.
    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)

    by rjamestaylor ( 117847 ) <rjamestaylor@gmail.com> on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @03:03PM (#3519062) Journal
    This announcement explains Pixar's move to OS X [slashdot.org]. How else could a render farm on OS X be space-effective?

  • Here are some pics I took at the event... (Score:3, Informative)

    by jzawodn ( 29312 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @03:11PM (#3519128) Homepage
    Fast connection [zawodny.com]

    Not as fast connection [zawodny.com]

  • People who will buy this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by theolein ( 316044 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @04:34PM (#3519765) Journal
    Firstly, hats off to Apple. It looks good (and that is a selling point, especially in design companies). It has enough power, the group of researchers (there was a story here on them wanting to use G4's but the tower couldn't be stacked) can now stack them. And above all (this is redundant, has been posted already) the admin software and unlimited seats licence will be selling points in those places (schools, design companies etc) where there is no one who has the technical capability to setup a linux box (and the Cobalts from Sun are not very good in terms of software admin and cost more with far less power) who probably thought that they were stuck with Windows servers.

    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)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @04:37PM (#3519788) Homepage
    With Apple's recent knack for removing "legacy" ports on their machines, it's really, really nice to see that they thoughfully added a serial port on the Xserve for console access. My server farm is all Unix, and as such, I don't use a KVM, rather, I use a serial terminal server.The Xserve, with both serial and VGA would work great in any server farm environment. Kudos to Apple!

  • More evidence .... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Harv ( 102357 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @05:03PM (#3519946)
    that the old "not invented here" mentality is dead at Apple.

    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)

    by mallie_mcg ( 161403 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2002 @08:01PM (#3521057) Homepage Journal
    1) I suppose RC5-64 seeing as that is the one thing i seem to care about at the moment. DAMN, a keyrate of 20.7 M/Keys/sec is faaast. and 48x that in a rack, makes me wish i had much money to blow. DnetcDB [distributed.net]

    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.

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