[gumby5647]

well...someone had to start it....

have at it people...

[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: gumby5647 ]

[Westfoto]

Originally posted by gumby5647:
<STRONG>well...someone had to start it....

have at it people...</STRONG>

Well it is after 9:00 AM PST and no word from Apple on anything

[SkullMacPN]

Its scheduled to run from 9 to 12 PST. Three hours, jeez. Who wants to bet Steve spends the first two and a half torturing the press with a complete product line overview... and THEN intros the server.


Edit: I stand corrected. He's introing it FIRST... hrmm...

[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: SkullMacPN ]

[gumby5647]

don't forget the COMPLETE run down of OS X and how great it is....

[SkullMacPN]

Wow, MacCentral now has a live run down of the event. Err... well its been there since 11:40... or so says the time stamp on the main page.

Funny, their clocks must be 45 minutes slow.

[gumby5647]

www.maccentral.com is updating live....

here we go.....weeeeeee

[Westfoto]

Here it is
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0205/14.server.php

[Superchicken]

First complaint...

WHY IS IT SO EXPENCIVE!?

(I'll get that one out of the way of the twit who thinks his server should be 500 dollars and include a proccessor faster than a power mac.)

My question is, with everyone saying that it's gona have Gigawire and a 1Ghz + proccessor. Wouldn't people buy that instead of the Power Mac unless it's like crazy priced?

[gumby5647]

mmmmm 4MB L3.....sounds like the 7470 G4 is here. or some other generation G4.

EDIT: 2MB per CPU.... no new G4 hybrid yet

[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: gumby5647 ]

[jtc]

maccentral just posted the specs:

The server will have a dual 1GHz G4 processor, 256K L2, 4MB DDR L3 caches. System controller with custom ASIC done by Apple. Built-in: Gigabit Ethernet and FireWire. That controller has up to 2GB DDR SDRAM. (This is the first time that we know of that that SDRAM has been used in a 1U server.) In addition, it will have a PCI slot with gigabit Ethernet. This means server comes std. with two gigabit Ethernet ports. Quad ATA/100 drives, all on independent controllers and all have independent channels into system controller; a CD-ROM and 2 64-bit/66MHz PCI slots.

[Westfoto]

Here is the pricing which at first seems a bit high.

"Pricing & Availability starts at $2999 for two standard models: 1GHz dual 256MB DDR and a 60GB hard disk for $2999 -- 1GHz dual 512 MB DDR with a 60GB for $3999. But most people aren't going to buy a standard configuration -- they'll configure it themselves on the Apple store. "

[Westfoto]

As usual Apple is comparing itself to the PC side of things

"Compare this to the competitors:

* Dell PowerEdge 1560 $4277 - 3 bays
* IBM eServer X330 $5186 - 3 bays
* Sun Fire 280R $19590 - 2 bays
* Xserve $3999 - 266MHz DDR SDRAM, 4 bays means more total capacity


Apple is taking orders today and the server will ship in June "

[Drakino]

Hmm, no SCSI. I don't buy the "We're going with ATA because they're just as fast as SCSI and they offer real benefits in term of largest capacities." SCSI in servers still offers quite a few benefits, like command queuing and such.

Oh well, it will be a nice little box for some small ISP hosting and such. Still nothing in the high end area though, so IS X Server is still going to be held back.


On the competition front, not too bad, though people may balk at paying unknown prices for propritary IDE drives.

Lets see, the HP Proliant DL360 G2 is $3827 with dual 1.4 procs, 256 megs interleaved SDRAM, (Aka, just as fast as DDR), and 1 18.2gb SCSI drive on an integrated hardware array controller. Dual gigabit, 2 PCI slots, and integrated hardware level remote managment.

Hard to say what the reaction will be from the non Mac markets looking for Unix 1U servers.

[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: Drakino ]

[gumby5647]

kind of a bummer that it's only Dual Ghz.... i was hoping for something more. Anything faster, 1.1, 1.2Ghz. SOMETHING!

[MacGorilla]

Anybody got pictures of the beastie yet?

[SkullMacPN]

"Internet and Web services: Apache, QuickTime Streaming, WebObjects, Mail (SMTP, POP, IMAP), WebDAV, SSL, PHP, MySQL, Java, CGI, Caching Web Proxy.

File and print services: Mac (AFP), Windows (Samba, SMB/CIFS), Unix and Linux (NFS), Internet (FTP, WebDAV), LPR/LPD and SMB/CIFS printing."

Correct me if I'm wrong... but aren't some of these features only in the upcoming Jaguar?

[Cellery]

The specs didn't blow me away, but it's exciting that the next PowerMacs will probably get some of the architectural improvements. Like gumby5647, I'm also surprised that the chips aren't faster, you'd think a $4000 machine would get a faster chip than the ones that have been in the Quicksilvers for a while.

[scottiB]

C'mon this is Apple: the specs never will blow you away.

edit: Except for software pricing--unlimited clients--very cool.

[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: scottiB ]

[SkullMacPN]

"OS X Server and Xserve provide a completely headless operation..."

There! Again, isn't this a (at the moment) Jaguar-only feature?

Wow, Post #333. That means this post is 50% evil.

[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: SkullMacPN ]

[gumby5647]

i don't like the name either..."Xserve"

should have called it "PowerRack" or "PowerServer"

[macaddled]

edit: nevermind, no pci...

[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: macaddled ]

[Guy Incognito]

Wut? Nobody's satisfied that the servers are getting DDR-RAM (and thus mean that the next revision of the PowerMacs Pro towers will get DDR...actually...I'm not impressed either to be honest, Apple's late with DDR.)

[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: Guy Incognito ]

[KidRed]

Originally posted by macaddled:
<STRONG>edit: nevermind, no pci...

[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: macaddled ]</STRONG>

Eh?

In addition, it will have a PCI slot with gigabit Ethernet.

[SkullMacPN]

'Eh' is right. In fact, it has 2 "64-bit/66MHz PCI slots."

[C.J. Moof]

dangit, Apple. I really want RAID5 in my next server. IDE RAID is fine, as long as have that layer of hardware redundancy.....

[itomato]

I looooove this from Doc Searl's 'blog.

"Sitting behind Avie Tevanian, just met him. Nice guy. Very enthused about UNIX."

Avie. Enthused about UNIX. heh heh.. The guy practically friggin' wrote Mach for cryin' out loud!

I hope that guy is joking!

[P]

DDR! That sort of implies a 7470 at least - the 7455 has a too slow frontside bus to make full use of DDR. Of course a dual 7455 could use it with a bit clever engineering, but still... Where's the spec sheets?

[itomato]

Originally posted by C.J. Moof:
<STRONG>dangit, Apple. I really want RAID5 in my next server. IDE RAID is fine, as long as have that layer of hardware redundancy.....</STRONG>

"Alex Grossman, director of server and storage at Apple. Steve just opened up another part of the demo rack. 14 drive bays. 1.68"terrorbytes" of storage per rack set. Dual 2Gb Fibre Channel... Redundant drives, power, cooling... Independent ATA controllers. RAID processor, 128 MB of processor cache."

[G4ME]

Why isn't it on apple's website? everyone else knows about it but them, and I want some pictures.

[Kristoff]

Originally posted by C.J. Moof:
<STRONG>dangit, Apple. I really want RAID5 in my next server. IDE RAID is fine, as long as have that layer of hardware redundancy.....</STRONG>

Dude....

4 drives is plenty for RAID 5 AND a hot spare!!!

1-data1
2-data2
3-parity
4-hot spare

OS X has RAID support built in.

[Osakans]

Two words: XServe Raid

[gumby5647]

one more thing....

[gumby5647]

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

****.....

[boardsurfer]

14 120GB ATA drives

--&gt;boardsurfer&lt;-- knows nothing about servers, but that sounds pretty freakin impressive.

[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: boardsurfer ]

[Chris Grande]

Originally posted by boardsurfer:
<STRONG> </STRONG>

Speechless!

[gumby5647]

still no pictures,....what the hell.....

[CaseCom]

Is it pronounced "eks-serve" or "ten-serve"?

[Chris Grande]

Originally posted by CaseCom:
<STRONG>Is it pronounced "eks-serve" or "ten-serve"?</STRONG>

I'm thinking "eks" Serve.

[boardsurfer]

You can service an Xserve in seconds.

I'm thinkning "Eks" Serve as well.


BS

[C.J. Moof]

Originally posted by itomato:
<STRONG>

"Alex Grossman, director of server and storage at Apple. Steve just opened up another part of the demo rack. 14 drive bays. 1.68"terrorbytes" of storage per rack set. Dual 2Gb Fibre Channel... Redundant drives, power, cooling... Independent ATA controllers. RAID processor, 128 MB of processor cache."</STRONG>

There's my killer RAID system.... much better. AFAIK, OS X Server's RAID abilities have been 0 & 1 so far, not RAID5. I would expect the new raid processor to expand that....

Looking forward to the official spec sheet....

hrmmm. Is redundant drives mirroring or R5? Patience, young admin, patience.

[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: C.J. Moof ]

[agentz]

store's down

Edited to add: someone had to say it

[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: agentz ]

[macaddled]

Originally posted by SkullMacPN:
<STRONG>'Eh' is right. In fact, it has 2 "64-bit/66MHz PCI slots."</STRONG>

My bad. When I saw it first at Maccentral, all I saw was the one PCI slot already taken up by gigabit. We need at least one more slot for video boards in order to use it in posthouses.

They're gonna sell a million of these to the film industry. Bundle it with Final Cut Pro and start cashing the checks.

[Chris Grande]

Well its now on apples site!
http://www.apple.com/xserve/

[agentz]

pictures now on apple.com!!

[agentz]

I particularly like this little dig at Microsoft:

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.

[mitchell_pgh]

&lt;sarcasm&gt; NO WAY I'M EVER GOING TO GET ONE OF THESE! It doesn't even have sound in! They didn't even mention the video card!!!&lt;/sarcasm&gt;

[theiliad]

WHAT!!! no video....ahh crap

[Leonard]

Hmmm... I'm not a server user, but that thing looks beautiful. Apple can even make a 1U rack mounted server look nice. PC2100 DDR RAM... I'm drooling. You may have people buying this thing just to upgrade their PowerMac. Put in a Radeon8500 and you'd have an awesome graphics machine. I notice they mention a Radeon8500 on the tech page, not an Nvidia Geforce 4Ti.

Looks like MWNY is going to be interesting for the PowerMac.

[mitchell_pgh]

For the record, the red motherboard that was being sold on ebay doen't look anything like this motherboard... First off, it's blue...

[neilw]

I think this pretty clearly foreshadows the MWNY PowerMacs. G4's with updated motherboard including DDR. Hopefully (!) there'll be a speed bump in there too, and maybe some other gizmos (built-in Bluetooth, etc.) Mind you, if the pricing is good, and there's a reasonable speed bump, I wouldn't be too disappointed. G5's at MWSF.

I look forward to seeing benchmarks comparing performance to the dual 1G PowerMac, so we can see for once and for all exactly how much additional performance the DDR is giving us.