XServe RAID Finally Makes An Entrance 47
Currawong writes "Apple's very delayed 3U XServe RAID box has quietly appeared on their web site with details. Most interesting being that it uses ATA100 drives, rather than the usual SCSI, making it a bargain at US$10,999 for 2.52TB, especially compared to similar devices that cost up to 10 times as much for the same storage capacity. In addition, ATTO announced at the same time a MacOSX only dual-channel fibre channel SCSI card."
I wonder (Score:3)
Re:I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.lafcpug.org/review_xserve_raid.html [lafcpug.org]
According to Apple, a maxed-out Xserve RAID can support an HD 1080i stream. That would be quite a thing to see. I wonder how loud this thing is? You'd hope that Apple would have predicted it'd be used by people with a G4 on their desk, not just by people with an Xserve in their data center.
Re:I wonder (Score:2)
There's some very intresting rumors regarding HD + XRaid and XServes for network rendering floating about. Apple's hopefully going to go after the mid-range Avid market.
Re:I wonder (Score:1)
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I wonder (Score:1)
Thats a very logical statement but in practice its not what happens a lot of the time.
$10k is not much money to a company. When you are a manager spending other peoples money (OPM) you just want to solve a problem not spend your time researching all the options. (Ironically, that same manager might spend 6 months trying to decide what home computer to buy
Ive seen CEOs that know zero about computers buy $20k Dell servers just because of the name brand. That company is now out of business BTW.
Re:I wonder (Score:2)
Can you email me the name and address of your company, please? I'd like to send them a resume.
Re:I wonder (Score:1)
Re:I wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
To paraphrase the Simpsons, you don't get to be the biggest companies in the world by writing a bunch of checks.
Re:I wonder (Score:1)
BBC News [216.239.53.100]:
As Texas governor, Mr Bush quietly set up a committee led by Exxon, with other big oil and chemical companies, to advise him what to do about the state's deadly air pollution.
Regulators wanted compulsory cuts in emissions of up to 50% - this "secret" committee instead proposed making the cuts voluntary.
Mr Bush duly steered the polluters plan through the state legislature.
Huge donations
Texas anti-corruption law made it illegal to donate money to Mr Bush as governor whilst such legislation was under consideration.
But that month, Mr Bush declared for his candidacy for president - making the $150,000 donated by committee members and their representatives completely legal.
Re:I wonder (Score:1)
Think about this, Xserve's are built to be in a rack. The Apple RAID arrays are built to be in a rack (although they don't have to be). Lots of people have their server racks very far away from their offices. Like if you had your server housed at semaphore? (semaphore.net) Or Exodus, or whereever, it doesn't matter. Some businesses keep their servers maybe a floor below the computer people, this means if something breaks, you are right there to fix it. How much time does it take for you to fix it? Does it take $500 worth of your time in the life of the product? Will your savings in brand and/or quality make up for your time? Will the Apple RAID arrays work better since they are all pieced together the same? These things are made to _work_. They are not a empty box, with connectors on it, waiting for some noname, or bandname harddrives to be installed. They all have the same thing. Why? Apple tests to see if the drives they put in their/your equipment work, if the drive works well enough, Apple mass produces it.
To make sure people don't think I'm on the wrong side here, I have to say this too. Apple's bean counters (yeah, the people who think about MONEY) have created some problems with Apple hardware. I had quite a problem hooking some iMac's and G4's to a managed hub some time back. Why was this? This is because Apple had switched some Ethernet controller switch and it happened to not be compatible with the 10megabit hub we were using. How did I fix this, before the software update was available? I had gone out and bought like 20 or 30 Netgear 5-port 10/100 switches to install in between the machines and the old "POS" hub. I would have replaced the hub with a HP 10/100 switch, but the wiring in the building was not good enough for this, and the hub wasn't my responsibility, it belonged to another department (Computing and Communications). (Yes, I work for a University.)
Bottom line;
No Hassle. Saves time. Maybe even saves money.
You choose. Something you know works? Or something that _may_ work. I will always choose something that just plain works.
Think I'm lazy? I'm not really. Well, sometimes. But, my servers run. My servers KEEP running. I have far better uptimes than anyone else that I personally know at the University I work at. Some of the big mainframes have been up quite a bit longer, but I don't have the kind of money they spend on the UPSes. I also keep the upgrades rolling in. Some think that uptime matters more, more than updates even. I don't run updates during working hours, I stay late, I do them after hours. Does this cause short outages for a person or two every year? Sure. I do believe that out of the (hang on, checking logs......) 18 minutes my FileMaker Pro server was down last year, that nobody even tried to use it.
I bought a keychain mass storage memory thingy the other month. I chose a "256MB Lexar Media Jump Drive 2.0" for the brand and model. Why? Because I _know_ it will work. I plugged this thing into my USB 1.1 port (G4, mirrored drive doors running MacOS X 10.2.x). Guess what happened? A drive icon popped up on the desktop called "LEXAR MEDIA" or some such. I didn't have to do _anything_ except plug the thing in. So that night I came home, plugged it into my Dell Dimension XPSB866, running Windoze 2000, had to click "OK" a few times and it did the same thing, just popped up on my screen. Now this is quality. ((On another note, MacOS X didn't ask _anything_ when seeing this device, windows did. Makes me think.)) It's USB 2.0 (good for my PC anyways, the Mac doesn't seem to understand what USB 2.0 is, at least not a NEC USB 2.0 card on MacOS X 10.2.3ish.) Lexar Media is a good brand. (Lexar Media is the _only_ company that Sony has allowed to make Memory Sticks.) Of course other brands were cheaper, but I don't know for sure if they will work. I also don't know for sure that they will be supported in future versions of MacOS or Windows. I am pretty damned sure Lexar Media will be around for some time to come. I don't know this about some other companies, and I sure as hell don't have time to check every company I see a matching product for. I know this wasn't a huge purchase, but I think it's a good example.
Before I go. I wish to say something. I believe MacOS X is the best OS I have used. I have used many many OSes. Windoze 95-XP, MacOS 6-9, all sorts of *NIX command lines (which I do love still, nothing like a 80 column 25 line black terminal) and of course X11. MacOS X 10.2.x (not so much the earlier versions) is a whole lot more advanced than all of these. Things just work. I don't want to mess around configuring stuff all over the place. I plug something in, it works.
OK, I'm done ranting. Send one back eh? I love arguing.
(wow, I just previewed. Longest comment I've ever sent, but a LONGSHOT.
Blah blah blah. I'm _finally_ done now.
--
Nate Hart - nhart at NbOoSnPeAzM dot net
(ditch the caps)
http://bonez.net/
Re:I wonder (Score:2)
Re:I wonder (Score:1)
Re:I wonder (Score:1)
Re:I wonder (Score:1)
But I will admit, their price isn't bad. I don't care for their lack of support for other OS's. But that would be too much to ask, now wouldn't it?
Old News (Score:5, Insightful)
The xServe RAID box has been out for a month. Why is this "news"?
Re:Old News (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Old News (Score:2)
Not news (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Apple are approaching this carefully, there aren't a huge number of orders, and they know that in the server area they have to be established and seen as a long term player to gain serious marketshare. So they're doing this humbly and slowly, making sure that they get things right.
They are *not* betting the farm on the server solutions, they are great products and I think its good to see the company diversifying both above (XServe XRaid) and below (iPod) their usual established market area.
-Nex
Apple does nothing "quietly", this was 1 month ago (Score:1)
yes its a bargain! (Score:3, Interesting)
does your equivalent system hav dual, redundant power supplies, dual controllers? dual ethernet? dual fiber channel? independent masters on all the disks? fit in 3-U, have hot swap? Web browser based administration? have a 3 year 4 hour response time warntee? have an available replacemt kit for all the parts? have legendary apple quality?
then there is the cost of installation and maintainence. does your system come out of the box, plug it in and spend less than ten minutes to configure it to run samba, nfs, appleshare, apache, LDAP, DNS, Netboot server, mailserver over a dual ethernet gigbit interface? with an unlimited client lic?
I'll answer for you. NO.
Re:yes its a bargain! (Score:2)
wrong. read the specs. these IDE drives have higher rates than most scsi drives.
wow. i'm going to tell my boss we can let go of 10-12 of the jr SAs 'cause we can get a 2.52TB fileserver running in 10mins. and it will be completely tuned and customized for our needs?
well no of course not. But you might be able to let one of them go and that would pay for the system. That's the point.
Re:a bargain? (Score:4, Insightful)
Full original Feb 10 story, and discussion, here: (Score:1, Redundant)
I follow it all carefully and I didn't even notice (Score:1)
Anyway, aren't you going to debate over ATA100 vs. SCSI or something? ;)
No, it appeared on Feb 10 (Score:2)
Before the trolls get started... (Score:5, Informative)
This is not an offering from Apple that is designed to compete for storage in the home, except maybe for those individuals running a small business. This is not just a "bunch of storage," this is a high-quality server solution that is designed to compete with Sun and IBM.
This thing has a battery backup module for the cache, dual and *independant* RAID controllers, redundent *cooling* (incidentally, these are self regulating as well), and redundent power supplies. It also all fits inside of a 3U case, which is phenomenal, and hot-swapable drives.
Good Fiber Channel pricing (Score:3, Informative)
500 bucks...
If indeed this is a standard fiber channel pipe, that's a bargain. Most of the SANs I've seen run around $2000 for such a card, and it makes adding fiber worthwhile on a desktop G4 even if you need the bandwidth.
REASON IT IS NEWS--SEE BELOW (Score:1)
Already run on slashdot on Feb 10 (Score:1, Redundant)
Not news? Sure it is. (Score:1)
(Don't flag me as FLAMEBAIT please!
--
Nate Hart -
(you figure it out)
http://bonez.net/
This was ALREADY posted on apple.slashdot.org... (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Not news? Sure it is. (Score:1)
Is it okay to tcsh people before you think about it?
Re:ATA ? (Score:1)
Yes, that's right, each drive gets its own independent ATA channel to itself, which allows Apple to acheive redundancy, speed, and a low overall price.
Re:ATA ? (Score:1)
--
Nate
n h a r t @ n e t . b o n e z
(reverse net & bonez)
http://bonez.net/