[djfreekshow]

It's great to be a member of this forum... really got some neat stuff in here.
So, as the title mentions, Christmas might be coming early on a pallet for me. I'm not a fan of bragging, and correct me if I get out of line, but I am almost peeing my pants out of sheer excitement. My brand new Xserve G5 should be coming this week, along with a sweet list of hardware. Now, the only downfall: I have never dealt with the expedited Apple uses, and they forgot to put SpedEx 2day on for me, so I live with free shipping for now. So far, I have been sent three things this season that have been damaged. The APC mentioned in my sig had a bent rack faceplate(the screw panel on the front left), and the chassis of it was cratered a quarter inch in. I never even plugged it in... sat there for ten minutes before deciding to package it up and call Chenda. But, I digress. I absolutely cannot wait to get that server here and set it up. And the best part: it's not on my tab. If anybody here has ever worked with an Xserve G5, please give me some insight as to anything that is commonly overlooked in the initial setup and what I should consider/take action on when setting it up, PLEASE! Again, this is a wonderful forum to be a member of, and I can see that it will have a lot of great help with my apples, and other things alike(at times). Thanks for any help, Xserve people.

[djfreekshow]

Also... how loud is it? I know it's like a 747 landing, but in what type of tone? I am already running a large number of noisy machines, and although this Xserve is going in my room, I will have the GizMac, so that should help a little. The only word I do not want to see when I read replies is 'overkill'... please do not call it overkill... I love my Xserve.

[jamil5454]

What are you using it for?

[Bandit240]

I havent worked on the Xserve myself, but ive been around one. A 747 landing would be about right. It seems to be a space heater also. It was located on the 3rd floor of a 3story house, and the whole top floor was about 3-6x the temp of the rest of the house.

[sadpandas]

Freekshow,
you have a ton of hardware over there. is that all under one roof? what kind of interwebs do you have? speedwise? curious.

[djfreekshow]

Sorry for the delayed response, guys! Answers in order asked:

I am using it for some simple things right now. It will be used as an internet gateway, storage, encoding, iChat server, OD controller, Kerberos authentication(for my LAN machines), SSH, FTP, and in the near future, HTTP. If I ever need anything else for it to do, I have plenty of headroom. And, many people would say my windows server would be enough for all that. Well, it wasn't! (but I will be upgrading it to a dual Xeon motherboard and processor set as soon as I get some more money)

Yes, it is all under one roof. It sits in my house, and the Xserve (when it arrives, expected the 30th, knock on wood), will sit in my room, with my widnows server, my Alienware desktop, and a recently acquired PowerMac Dual G4 450. Also, it will be on the same area as a machien I built for LAN parties, but that will not be turned on often. I do realize this poses many issues as to heat and noise, but I have gotten used to sleeping to unbearably loud noises, and the heat is not an issue. My room is cold right now, so if it warms up, it is only a plus for me. My line is a commercial line from Comcast cable, advertised at 7-8 down/1-2up. Right now, it's the best I can do, but in the not too distant future, I will definitely gof or a FiOS line from Verizon. http://www22.verizon.com/FiOSforhome...t/package.aspx That is the details page for it. I am amazed that it is possible to get fibre speeds like that for that little. I know a T1 fractional line is not cheap, as we used to share one with our neighbor, back before I knew what the hell T1 was. It was split cost at 200/month for each of us. Back to the topic at hand, though.
My Xserve and whatnot will be held in the GizMac Xrack PRO2 enclosure (http://www.xrackpro.com/xrackpro2.htm), which supposedly reduces noise from the 1U DC-10 monster inside by up to 75%... that is 45% more than I had hoped for... good enough for me. To answer any question as to why I bought the PowerMac... I don't know. Impluse.

[djfreekshow]

And, as an added note, the LAN itself is all CAT6 (some CAT5e in places... updating that this summer) running all gigabit with a gigabit switch. Gigabit NIC's in all desktops, as well. My Powerbook is the only guy left in the dust...

[drewcifer]

someone seems a little obsessive... hehehehh

[djfreekshow]

I think I am beyond obsessed... heh...

[Lateralus]

Welcome to the forums.

Slight issue with your signature, though;

Signatures

Our current signature rules give you two options:

1) An image (200x50px max, 10KB max, non-animated) and up to one line of text, OR
2) No image, and up to four lines of text.

In either case, blank lines do count, and lines must be of reasonable length so they don't wrap on most screens (think 900px browser window width).

[djfreekshow]

Thanks, Lateralus. I did think that my sig was just a bit overboard, anyway. Glad to have your help. By the way, that dual G5 sounds like it's a really nice little machine there. I sure wish I could have a dual G5.

[djfreekshow]

Small follow-up:
The Xserve, as far as I know, has extremely high capacity of airflow when it needs to. I know that when I run my powerbook G4 in target disk mode, it becomes really hot and the fan kicks in (only happens when I watch DVD's otherwise). The Xserve takes it a step further. The Xserve runs fans at full capacity and gets very hot. Otherwise, for what I have been using it for, it has not been loud enough to keep me awake while sitting out in the open in my room. To run it in FW target, I have to either be awake or move it into the basement because it is so loud, but pretty soon I will have the rack to keep it in. I still would like any suggestions with setting it up, as they would do me great work.