Apple Updates Xserve, Announces Xserve RAID 404
jht writes "This morning Apple introduced an updated Xserve and the long-awaited Xserve RAID. The relevant specs for new Xserve: single or dual G4/1.33, upgraded DDR 333 RAM, and FireWire 800 all added, with pricing between $2799 and $8248 for stock configs. The Xserve RAID specs: shipping in configs of 720GB for $5999, 1.26TB for $7499, or 2.52TB for $10999. It uses up to 14 180GB drive modules (each on a separate ATA/100 channel), and a pair of Fibre Channel interfaces to connect them to the Xserve."
Bye Software Raid (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Bye Software Raid (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep. Each set of 7 drives has a RAID controller.
another use (Score:4, Funny)
Re:another use (Score:3, Funny)
Took freakin long enough... (Score:5, Interesting)
Client : I want something really big, and really fast, and really cheap.
Me : Then you don't want anything from these guys (M$).
Re:Took freakin long enough... (Score:2, Interesting)
ATA RAID (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:ATA RAID (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ATA RAID (Score:3, Insightful)
It's good to see Apple being pragmatic about this. If IDE offers sufficient performance (and it should, given that each drive has its own IDE controller), then why not use it?
OK, so you can buy SCSI drives that are faster due to higher rpm. But can you build a 2.5 Tb system with SCSI that outperforms an Xserve RAID?
Re:ATA RAID (Score:2)
Hey, maybe I'm crazy, and I just like all the lights on the front.
Re:ATA RAID (Score:2)
Re:ATA RAID (Score:5, Insightful)
Now fast forward, things like usb and firewire take care of things like scanners and other higher speed peripherals, the the internal disk bus can be just that. So all of a sudden ide makes sense. And then in terms of performance, ide has definitely caught up and it would be hard to make an argument for scsi from a strictly price/performance standpoint.
So, while a curiousity, it not all that ironic, just a sign of the times.
Re:ATA RAID (Score:5, Interesting)
They also began using IDE CD-Rom drives quite frequently. I assume the price break was too much to pass up. I have quite a few older Macs here that have both IDE and SCSI controllers on the motherboard.
Additionally, when they had gone full IDE just a few years ago they were still including the option for a SCSI card and SCSI hard drives. I noticed recently (last revision?) that the G4 PowerMac no longer includes the option for SCSI hard drives, though a controller card is still available.
Re:IDE Q (Score:3, Insightful)
When Apple first promoted SCSI, it was a very novel deal. PC's lagged considerably, esp. when you could get a Mac with serial (Appletalk) and SCSI built-in. Once they had SCSI, I guess was cheaper to string the hard drive into rather than add IDE? I kinda wished they jammed a parallel port and RS-232 in there, too, but that's greedy.
Also, why does IDE not do external devices?
I'll note that SCSI was hardly ideal, esp. in its earliest form. The chain could onlt be very short, and ordering the devices plus termination were a bit of black magic to get it to work. God forbid you pull a cable with the power on. Plus the SCSI cables were *expensive*.
Does anyone else remember "analysts" making fun of Apple for going to USB and Firewire?
Re:IDE Q (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know all the reasons, but at least one is that the max length for an ide cable is like a foot and a half. Add to that the intervening connectors and I assume that the ide signal is not robust enough to survive such a rugged journey.
God forbid you pull a cable with the power on. Plus the SCSI cables were *expensive*.
Remember that hot pluggable peripherals is a realtively recent thing (at least affordable ones). Back then they were warning you not to unplug your parallel cables while computer/printer was on. And god forbid you unplugged your kb or mouse (this is all on a pc). Your right about the scsi cables, absolutely criminal the cost of those stupid things.
Does anyone else remember "analysts" making fun of Apple for going to USB and Firewire?
Remember, you can always spot the trailblazers, they're the ones with the arrows sticking out their backs
Re:Drive manufacturers killed SCSI (Score:2)
Well we were talking about times past, even before ps/2 came around. I've always had hit or miss experiences with keyboards. Pre-386 kb's tended to stop working after they were pulled. A couple of old Dell's would actually lock up the system if you tried to plug the kb back in after you unplugged it. Dell's from about 4-5 years ago had problems when unplugging ps/2 kb and mice. The kb repeat rate would get hosed (you could correct it by going back and tweaking the values) and the mouse tracking rate would also get messed up. Now I can't say with certainty if this was a kb/mouse problem, or just Windoze (NT) getting confused, but it was far from "plug and play".
Re:IDE Q (Score:2)
I'm a longtime Mac user who was envious of IDE HD drives for years, then Apple abruptly switched. IRC there are certainly advantage to a SCSI HD, but omitting the on-drive controller saves $$$.
IDE has an on-drive controller just like SCSI - that's why they called it IDE in the first place: Integrated Drive Electronics. Before IDE/ATA, you had to run a separate controller card in an ISA slot that kept track of the allocation of physical (not logical) sectors on the disks and positioned the read/write heads manually. Anyone remember SpinWrite? Norton's Disk Optimizer? LOW LEVEL FORMATS? **shudder**
SCSI implements a much more sophisticated set of command, signaling and contention protocols than IDE, but they both feature a controller integrated into the drive.
Re:ATA RAID (Score:2)
Times change. Apple hasn't shipped a SCSI hard drive in years.
Funny how the Xserve even looks good (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Funny how the Xserve even looks good (Score:5, Insightful)
Good Design - a joy to work with ;-)
And somehow that translates in a better bottom line for the buyer.
More Blinkenlights! (Score:5, Funny)
...on the Xerve RAID. Good to see Apple continues to include such essentials.
Xserve experiences good and bad (Score:4, Interesting)
A while ago I bought two xserves to act as diskserves to a linux cluster and to backup my desktop macs. I bought these machines because I felt they were a good deal. I got bids on several pc based linux disk servers, as well as several NAS boxes. I was comparing 480GB machines. a high quality generic brand (supermicro) with scsi disks and dual Gigabit ran about $8000 (at the time). The lowest bid I got was $5000 but the unknown quality and reputation of the vendor was not satisfactory. The mac xserves ran just under $7000 using IDE disks with 4 indepenedent masters (out performs the scsi). Additionally the mac had other nice features such as: 1U versus 3U. hot swap. advanced admin tools.
I bought both the apple and supermicro based systems in the end and can compare them directly. . after I unpacked the mac I was even more impressed with the high quality construction and ease of access to the interior in comparison.
first the good news:
What really made it for me on the macs was the fact that I had to hire a sysadmin to correctly set up my linux box with load balancing, Ldap, mail server, and moreover to keep it patched and to monitor it. On the macs I set them up myself. No detected problems with load balance. and the mac tools let you set up nearly all the services you might want with an intuitive gui.
Actually, I had a few snags but even here I have to give apple a good reprot card. they chancged how they did network admin right when I got my box. so all the documentation was for the obsolete tools and none for the new. So I got things really screwed up with services I could not turne off once turned on. The machines would gag when they could not find their ldap serviers or when they were cut off from the internet. But I called apple on the free service plan. after a ten minute wait on came a guy who really knew his stuff and spent about an hour with me getting all of my various problems sorted out and teaching me the new system. And in fact the next day he called me back! said he had another idea about a question i had asked him. I was really impressed on the customer service. its much better than for my other mac computers. Since then Ive had mac people call me back three times with ideas for me. Now that the new tools are better docuimented (still a few gaps), life is easy.
perhaps the best feature is the software update feature. I get patches and new tools delivered automatically and have the confiudence they wont screw up my all apple configuration. thus I still have not needed a sys admin. At the purchase time I had considered some NAS boxes (e.g. iomega,snap...) for the purpose of making sys admin simple. But these things have lousy throughput for the price and aren't versatile computing machines.
Now the bad news:
However I have had three problems with my xesrves that I dont have with my linux box.
first no raid 5. that's absouluetly maddening. I bought a raid 5 solution from a third party but I'm nervous it wont be effieicnt or it will die someday when I do a self-update that makes it incompatible.
second, and this compounds the above problem is the UFS/HFS+ dichotomy. while macs do run UFS, they dont do it effieicently or with any advanced features like journalling. Moreover the OS and some mac apps wont work unless they are on UFS. so you always have to have a HFS+ partition. but wait! you cant partition a raid disk with different file systems (on apple) so this means if you want to have any hfs raid the whole disk has to be HFS+. on our four disk Xserve this means I ended up with two disks RAID1 HFS+ and and two disks UFS raid 1- a whopping 120GB of UFS out of my 480GB (raw) can be UFS. yuck!. fortunately there is now a partionalble raid 5 soultion from a theird party which fixes this issue. (the reason I wanted UFS, was because even though I lost some effieiceny i wanted no surprises for my linux systems due to the filenaming case sensitivity)
The third problem I have had is that while the admin tools are wonderful and run on remote machines, there are a few tools and apps that will not run remotely. for example, if I want to use the GUI software update remotely, I cant. I have to use the terminal CLI tool. This is not too bad, but its just an example. if you use other gui tools, like brickhouse firewall or whatever, you have to go to the terminal attactched to the machine.
My work around for this is to use OSXVNC which does the job. However there is a catch I dont like. You cant use osxvnc on a headless mac. that is you have to have a display device connected to the mac to use osxvnc!! there's no way I want to have a display for each mac xserve. Of course I could use a KVM switch but my preference would be that it should be unneccessary for remote admin. my work around here is that I can fool the macs by briefly connecting a display to them after boot. I can then unplug the display and OSXVNC will still work on my headless mac.
My conclusion is that apple has a wonderfulhigh quality machine. And it will work perfectly for you if you dont require UFS or remote admin of GUI based apps. When I bought my system I had just had a bad experience with 20 athalon servers that had died from heat delamination of the fans and were unstable due to current glithces from the cd roms. I was thus very risk averse. when I bought the apples I knew I was buying peace of mind, and not paying extra for it. I had no idea what good customer service I was going to get. PLus I did not realize I could also buy a complete replacement part kit (down to the motherboard) to have locally. Since my experience with their customer service I bought the extened warantee. its lot cheaper than a sys admin.
when mac comes out with native raid5 and someone writes a VNC that can run headless all will be well.
p.s. I apologize to the few slashdotters who are outraged when a post is reposted. this review was posted as a sub comment to a sub topic on an earlier artilce today. rightfully it belonged in this thread so I reposted it here.
NOW WITH RAID 5 (Score:5, Informative)
any how I was mistaken--the apple web page did not mention the raid 5 so I assumed it was just the same as the old 1-U xserve. sorrty for the misinfomation
i hope you're still hungry! (Score:2)
Re:Nope! (Score:2)
well then (Score:2)
Re:well then (Score:3, Insightful)
Report this as a bug to the maintainer of the package - if they're at all interested in supporting Mac OS X as a Unix platform, they will have to remove the dependency on a case-sensitive volume format (aside from some ex-NeXT users, and fanboys who don't know any better, the Mac volume format is HFS+).
If you have to use some software which requires UFS, the best workaround is to create a large enough UFS disk image and install onto that - saves having to dedicate a whole partition to UFS, and handy for dumping onto DVD if you want to move the "UFS world" to another machine.
Re:Xserve experiences good and bad (Score:2)
Mine has a 900mhz P3 with 512mb of RAM. "Why would you put that in a NAS?" you ask? Because I had the money (: And even at that it was still way cheaper than the Apple. The reason I was even considering the Apple is because my NAS serves 25 Macintosh workstations - and the Dell NAS running Windows 2000 with Services for Macintosh does a pretty nice job. I can do complete remote management either through snapins or using Terminal Server which is free for admin use. It also has a web management console, though I don't use it because I prefer to use a Terminal session.
And it's basic X86 hardware. You could install Linux on it and have a Linux server serving your Linux cluster. Amazing! You could even yank the drives that it comes with and throw in 250GB Maxtor disks to get up to nearly 3/4 of a terabyte at RAID 5
640MB (Score:3, Funny)
Well, 640MB ought to be enough for anybody.
X overload (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I think it's official now; the letter X has been overused. First, we had X11 and all the things named after that, then Window XP and OS X. Now Xserve?
I think we all know where this is headed - it's going to be like the South Park where they say 'shit' 162 times and the Knight of Standards and Practices are going to come and kick us around for overusing the letter. Again, real-like imitates South Park
Njord
The letter X was made to vex - Edward Gorey
Re:X overload (Score:5, Funny)
And while they're at it at it... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:X overload (Score:2)
Ssssh!!! Compaq [compaq.com]might here you!!!
Re:X overload (Score:3, Funny)
eXserve
Add (more) internet functionality:
e-iXserve
And why don't we add in a Version number, after all it's a different version!
e-iXserve 2.0
And then we should probably denote how many processors it has:
e-iXserve 2.0 Single Processor
e-iXserve 2.0 Dual Processor
But wait! Don't forget if you order the Custom built "Ultimate" version:
e-iXserve 2.0 Custom Ultimate Edition
Isn't that better?
PS. These systems look great- I wouldn't mind one.
Re:X overload (Score:3, Funny)
Super e-iXserve 2.0 Custom Ultimate Turbo Champion Edition: The New Challengers
Re:X overload (Score:2)
well, just wait until the next major version of Max OS, or OS/XI. Then you could have XIServe and XIRaid.
Of course in a few decades there's going to be the problem of what to call OS/XXX. Maybe by then the porn industry will own the world, and this might work in Apple's favor..
Serial Ports? (Score:3, Interesting)
I work on a ProFibre DF4000 system.. and the serial port is the best way to configure the system. The *gak* windows based in-band management software is crap.
The only other thing I wonder is how 7200RPM ide drives benchmark against my 10kRPM FCAL disks.
Re:Serial Ports? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, your 10K disks would probably smoke these since they're only 7200 and on ATA/100. however, how much would 2.5 terrabytes cost in those 10K SCSI drives? That's what's incredible about this I think. for just over 10K you can get that much storage.
And yes there are DB-9 serial ports on tehre. they're on the Xserve servers as well. The X-line is apple's better than their previous half-assed attempts at making a real mac server(which previously were just desktop macs with extra ethernet ports).
Re:Serial Ports? (Score:2)
The xServe is a logical successor to the Network Server line. Oh, and you might be shocked at the benchmarks for those 7200RPM IDE drives, they won't match your 10k or 15k SCSI drives, but they'll come closer than you would think.
Re:Serial Ports? (Score:2)
The Fibre Channel protocol can run over both optic fibre and copper. Those DB-9s may well be for the Fibre Channel-over-copper support they cite.
Like SCSI, Fibre Channel comprises a protocol and some physical layer specs. In many cases, when you use Fibre Channel to connect to storage, the protocol that rides on top of Fibre Channel is: SCSI!
Re:Serial Ports? (Score:3, Informative)
The DB-9 connectors allow you to connect to the signaling ports on your UPSs.
Wow, that's a lot of ATA devices. (Score:2)
Like, up to 14 I think? Oof. It looks like they hid the ATA/RAID muckety-muck behind (what amounts to) a dedicated-PC-in-a-cabinet like the folks at perifitech [perifitech.com] do it, so the server doesn't need to know anything about the nature or configuration of the arrays beyond the fiber-channel adapter driver.
This leads me to some questions:
1) Is this a STANDARD fiber-channel SCSI adapter?
2) If so, is there any chance of using this cabinet on an x86 server?
Re:Wow, that's a lot of ATA devices. (Score:2)
Oh, great. (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess that's progress for you, but we can't help but feel screwed over.
Re:Oh, great. (Score:2)
Why is that? This happens every day to people who've bought almost any kind of computer/electronic anything? I can understand feeling kinda bummed out over the timing, but that's a lot different than feeling "screwed over". Is Apple supposed to say, "Now watch out everybody, we're going to bump the hardware in about a month or so, so don't buy anything right now"? Or are you saying that Apple should always have new models be more expensive than old ones just to make recent purchasers of the older models not feel bad?
Re:Oh, great. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh, great. (Score:2)
Life's just full of these little dilemmas, isn't it?
Re:Oh, great. (Score:2)
That way you get to keep the existing server without feeling ripped off and use it during the 6 weeks you'd be waiting for a new one anyway.
Apple price guarantee (Score:3, Informative)
from
http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/
-trout
Benchmarks? (Score:2)
Anyone tested this thing before release? ANy true numbers?
Re:Benchmarks? (Score:2)
AND the admin client is Java based so you don't need an XServe to admin it!
I can't understand... (Score:2, Insightful)
ATA/133 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ATA/133 (Score:2)
Most IDE drive manufacturers only claim ATA/100 for this reason. IBM, for example, does not make any ATA/133 drives. ATA/133 is "faster", but the drives can't keep up.
Advice from people who know RAID and fibre guff (Score:2)
To me 2.52TB is like a gigabyte would have been in the mid 80s. Far beyond even thinking about. I'm curious how it really matches to comparable hardware that's already out there, with respect to drive space, redundability(!) and connectivity.
Re:Advice from people who know RAID and fibre guff (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes.
Just a few months ago, last summer I think it was, I was looking for inexpensive RAID solutions that included Fibre Channel to the host and IDE on the back end. Performance wasn't an issue for us; capacity was, and reliability was somewhere in the middle of the importance stack. (Our customers were willing to accept occasional down-time, but were very price-sensitive.)
I found a system from a company called Chapparal-- I have no idea if I spelled that right. This system used IDE drives, bridged inside the box to SCSI, which was in turn bridged outside the box to Fibre Channel. Performance sucked ass, and it didn't have redundant anything, but the price was right: $10,000 a TB.
Now, just six months later, Apple-- a company known for higher-than-average prices-- is selling a technically superior and much better built box with twice the storage for roughly the same price.
While I wouldn't classify this as a cheap solution-- it's too well built and has too many features to be called "cheap"-- it's definitely a good deal.
Slot loading CDROM (Score:2)
small things amuse... etc
Xserve as workstation (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Xserve as workstation (Score:2)
Re:Xserve as workstation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not particularly impressive. (Score:3, Insightful)
Impressive (IDE better than you think.) (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, I would like to see the breakdown of the claim that someone could build the same thing for half the cost.
Re:Not particularly impressive. (Score:3, Informative)
This was only three years ago. HD size and other avances have done wonders for size of storage and heat/cooling requirements.
IDE drives on seperate controllers is a great way to get troughput comparible to SCSI systems. I beleive that there is work on getting command tag queueing available in the Linux IDE code (it may already be there). I imagine this could be avaiable in OSX shortly if not now. The need for SCSI is becoming less and less as IDE capabilities grow.
Very cool indeed.
Re:Not particularly impressive. (Score:2)
Have you read the article? The Xserve RAID has redundant everything, and fibre channel.
Re:Not particularly impressive. (Score:2)
So I think this is a score for Apple - its hard to find true ATA RAID boxen with this kind of redundancy. That may change - but right now......
Re:Not particularly impressive. (Score:5, Informative)
Redundant controllers
Redundant power supplies
Redundant fans
Redundant BUILT-IN UPS batteries (est. 72 hrs)
The drives, power supplies, controllers, fans, and batteries are all zero-downtime hot-swap. RAID 0, 1, 3, and 5, of course. No hardware two-level RAID, but Mac OS X offers 0 and 1 in software, so you could mix them to get 10 or 5+1, etc.
I about crapped myself when I saw this. No, your little FreeBSD box can't do this, sorry.
Builtin 72hr UPS ?? (Score:4, Informative)
According to the 'Tech Specs', typical power consumption is 300 W. Not taking into account any power losses in conversions etc., this means that for 72 hours UPS you'll need 72*300/12=1800 Ah worth of batteries. I don't know what the latest research in batteries have brought us, but I don't think you can fit a total of 1800Ah in batteries in 3u rackspace (and still have room for the 14 disks).
It's obvious that it's only 72 hours of battery backed up cache.
Re:Builtin 72hr UPS ?? (Score:2)
Yeah, I never said the thing would run full-throttle on those things; it's quite obvious when you look at them they look like little twin-pack DVDs. When you look at the pictures of the RAID Admin you can see the checkbox for using the cache "only if batteries are installed" and so on. But the fact is, even without a 3000Ah UPS for the Xserve and friends this will not lose the data. That, with journaling and RAID 5
Re:Builtin 72hr UPS ?? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not particularly impressive. (Score:2)
All those features. Every single one. Oh, and SMART monitoring, but that's trivial (really).
Re:Not particularly impressive. (Score:4, Funny)
Just like your reading ability....
Re:Not particularly impressive. (Score:5, Informative)
Tell that to Google.
Re:Not particularly impressive. (Score:4, Informative)
Replacing the Xserve with commodity hardware wouldn't be too hard (hell, replace the Xserve with a PowerMac - almost the same thing, only cheaper) but replacing the Xserver RAID would be.
Re:Not particularly impressive. (Score:3, Insightful)
Behind a RAID controller, IDE drives cut it quite nicely in the real world. What's important is the host interface, and the number of spindles behind the controller. This RAID will do just fine.
Re:Help!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple Servers as a life style? (Score:3, Informative)
Granted, you'll get faster processors on the x86 boxes... but Altivec runs encryption rather nice so your SSL routines will run fast on the G4 server.
I think it's really a well priced product, considering the type of performance you actually get out of it.
It's just too bad they didn't get an up to date CPU from Motorola. I was REALLY hoping that Moto would have delivered a PPC 7457 with 512K L2 cache... and possibly DDR FSB support... but you can never over-estimate MOTO
Re:Apple Servers as a life style? (Score:3, Insightful)
And easy to set up and use. And there you have probably the #1 reason to buy an Xserve.
Re:Apple Servers as a life style? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well if previous Apple server sales (pre xserve) are any indication, nobody is
But seriously, these boxes are for Mac shops. It provides them with a "real" server platform, but one that uses an os that is common with their desktop machines, making maintenance muuuuch simpler. Plus if the servers are easier to maintain in general, then you have a potentially huge savings from that fact alone. After all, how many places need raw cpu power, some obviously do, but I would guess that the majority have other issues that are more critical to them. This is a no brainer for people who are simply using the things as file servers, as the specs are more than adequate for that. I don't think people are looking at these things (or Apple positioning them) as massive compute servers to run their TB Oracle database servers on.
Most importantly, it keeps shops in the Apple fold. One argument that people could make is that if they have to go with pc/linux servers, then they might as well go with the desktops too, again to simplify maintenance. This way, Apple ensures that people stay 100% Mac and keep the M$/Linux infiltration at bay.
Its about keeping their users out of the MS trap (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a very good point, though really it is to keep Micro$osft at bay. GNU/Linux is really no threat to Apple at all
Apple is first and foremost a hardware company. If people started moving to GNU/Linux or FreeBSD in droves (perhaps because they become aware of the importance of the freedoms free software grants, or simply because they like the $0 cost), Apple still has the option of simply freeing the source code to their own operating system. While this doesn't jibe with Apple's current strategy, it isn't antithetical to their business model the way it would be for a monopolist like Microsoft (withness Microsoft's current "shared source" anti-free software disinformation campaign. Their only hope is to widely decieve the world's decision makers, a possible but increasingly unlikely proposition).
The Apple servers are important because it allows entities more comfortable purchasing proprietary corporate products over free software solutions the ability to do so without having to contend with the deliberate incompatabilities that Microsoft introduces, and will inevitably introduce again, thereby creating pressure to move to the Microsoft desktop as well. A GNU/Linux or FreeBSD server is no threat to Apple in this regard (both work fine together with Apple desktops, and neither introduces deliberate incompatabilities or attempts to coerce its clients into adopting the same system as their desktop), but there are plenty of old school Apple shops that still haven't grocked free software and its advantages, and would ultimately feel more comfortable paying for a shoddy Win2000 server than a free software or open source equivelent. That this is an ignornant or foolish stance for them to take is not at issue (it is clearly silly, but nevertheless remains all too common), that said shops not be lulled into the Microsoft trap is, at least from Apple's perspective.
These servers don't compete with GNU/Linux and FreeBSD servers all that much IMHO
Re:Apple Servers as a life style? (Score:2)
linux is not a competitor of apple's. sure, both use apache, samba, et. al., but they are hitting different markets. apple is selling the hardware too. they are selling reliable, quality hardware. so i see them more in comp. with sun. as much as linux admin tools have improved, it is still a CLI for servers. apple offers that, but is offereing a gui, and essentially, a server that even ellen fiess can set up. so, for the SOHO who doesn't want to shell tons for win2k licenses, and deal with all the headaches, apple offers a point and click unix solution. kinda neat really. and for the enterprise that wants solid hardware/software unix solutions, it is a great sell.
even though lintel servers are being rolled out by everybody and their brother, and sure some might be swayed to go with lintel vs. xserve, they are essentially in two diffrerent markets. what this does do, and is great, is expand unix mindset. which is a HUGE check against m$.
Re:Apple Servers as a life style? (Score:2, Informative)
Also the FSB of the Dell box is only 133 Mhz where as the Xserve is 167 Mhz. Yes, it's true there is not real DDR support, but, on the whole, I'd say you're definitely not going to be hurting on performance if you get an Xserve.
Re:ATA 100 versus 133 (Score:2, Informative)
Chris
Re:ATA 100 versus 133 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Apple's strategy (Score:5, Informative)
FALSE! Here is what you can use an Xserve for:
Samba SMB server (for Windows and Linux)
NFS Server (for Unix/Linux)
DHCP server (all OSs)
Apache http server (all OSs)
MySQL or Postgres Servers (all OSs)
POP, IMAP and SMTP Servers (all OSs)
FTP Server (all OSs)
QuickTime Streaming Server (all OSs)
DNS (all OSs)
Re:yes I can do all that for $399 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yes I can do all that for $399 (Score:3, Funny)
Do you get paid in grocery store coupons or something?
You can haul gravel all day in a Toyota pickup truck too, but I don't recommend it if you're depending on doing it for a living.
Re:Any better than a cheap linux box? (Score:2)
Check out this link:
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/specs.html [apple.com]
Re:Any better than a cheap linux box? (Score:2)
Re: redundant power supplies + raw IO (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is anyone using XServe in production environmen (Score:5, Informative)
I seriously doubt that Apple will cancel these machines. From a review last fall (which I can't remember the link to), the Xserve has jumped Apple up to around 1% or 2% of the server market as a whole. Before the Xserve Apple had maybe .25%. The Xserve is being reviewed heavy in lots of companies all over the place. Maybe not yours. But maybe yours should look at it. I also haven't seen ONE poor review of the Xserve anywhere.
The Xserves have been a bit noisy (understatement), but they've been unparalelled server boxes at my office. We haven't had one of our 5 servers go down since we bought our first last May when it was introduced. And then our other 4 last September. We've rebooted for maybe 3 security updates and a couple of OS updates. That's about it. They're great.
It's not so much the specs (which agreeably are not bad), as much as it's about the ease of setup (less than 10 minutes including rack screws), and the UNLIMITED CLIENTS. People here on /. seem to miss this one. with Sun, MS, or another standard server OS based on *NIX you have to pay per-seat lincensing out the wazoo! UNLIMITED clients for an OS which is SUPPORTED is a phenominal deal.
My $0.02
Re:Is anyone using XServe in production environmen (Score:2)
You do?
Funny. I could have sworn Redhat or Debian didn't have per-seat licensing, and in fact Redhat is also commercially supported - they have a long track record in that business.
So, remind me again, why is this a good deal? What possible reason is there to go with an expensive solution that gives you sod all (except integration with Mac clients I guess) that Linux on a cheap Intel box does not?
I'm yet to be convinced people who bought Apple servers unless they have a lot of Apple clients also are doing so more because they think it looks good than any sound technical or financial reasons.
Xserve is really nice (Score:4, Informative)
We fired up a Redhat workstation, told it to authenticate against the LDAP server, and it just worked. We then NFS mount the home directory share point and we're good to go.
We're migrating over to OS X + Linux workstations, and we're moving our OpenBSD servers to Linux (it's gotten much more secure over the past two years, where our boxes got rooted all the time).
Compared to the issues of getting Samba to play nicely under Linux, this is a dream to adminster. The Xserve is our file+print server, and we use Linux for the production servers. They authenticate against the Xserve, pretty slick.
The only thing that was annoying is that Apple's Netinfo based LDAP bindings weren't standard, so mod_auth_ldap for Apache didn't pick up the groups, but we were able to modify it pretty quickly. As soon as we get ready to package it up, we'll maintain our variant and make it available (email me with questions).
The mail server is a bit week, but AFP548.com [afp548.com]'s instructions for adding Exim solved that. We now have our virtual hosts working, albeit not as elegantly as I'd like (editting text files). Hopefully OS X Server 10.3 will fix that.
AFP548.com's stunnel help was also great. Now we have everything going over SSL, so we can play inside or outside of the firewall.
The stuff that works works really nicely. It's a GREAT solution for file+print serving, LDAP serving, and mail if you don't need virtual hosts (if you do, pick up Exim from AFP548). The only thing that's annoying is that adding SSL to their IMAP server is really odd, but we stunnel it and we're all set. We even got watchdog (a great program) handling the stunnel server, so on the occaisions that it crashes, it's right back up.
Alex
Re:nice box (Score:2, Informative)
Mac OS X Server is available in 10-client and unlimited-client editions to meet the needs of server deployments of any size. License restrictions apply only to simultaneous Mac file sharing services.
Notice the "Mac file sharing" bit at the end. I would imagine that few people are doing AppleShare serving with this. SMB and NFS is probably much more likely candidates for this box.
Bill Hayden
Re:nice box (Score:3, Informative)
Re:can you imagine... (Score:2)
Re:xserve is good for lowend servers - POWER4=HOT (Score:2)
Re:xserve is good for lowend servers (Score:2)
What those people are really waiting for is an Xserve with PowerPC 970 processors in it. If everything goes as predicted, that will combine the cruncy outside of Power4 with the chewy middle of Altivec.
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
In order to be news, it has to be both new and interesting. The latest PC from Bob's Computers of Dayton, Ohio, is neither.
Re:Xserve needs ECC & dual PSU's. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)