[mac-at-kearsarge]

Okay since I haven't seen anything about Apple's latest release ( I take it everyone's watching episode II???)I figured I be the first. Although a bit pricy, I am hoping that it will bring Apple into the buisness world which is where they need to perform to crish the intel world. If I'm lucky I will be able to afford one as my main system/server this summer. but I want to hear other peoples opinions, will this be a triumph for Apple or a flop.

[iKevin]

Wrong forum for this....But the Xserve isn't really pricey. As a matter of fact it's very competitive. I'm glad to see Apple release something that can compete in both speed and price to it's competitors.

Xserve get's 2 thumbs up!

[sambeau]

Originally posted by iKevin:
<STRONG>Wrong forum for this....</STRONG>

Why? Isn't this the Power Mac discussion forum?

[chris v]

The mods created a new forum category under OS X called Servers & Xserve. They moved all the Xserve topics there.

CV

[cdhostage]

bump.

I disagree. Given the price comparisions of servers WITH similar clockspeeds of inferior chips, the G4 is actually cheaper.

Now, maxed out... 2 gigs of Apple-approved DDR RAM, 480 gigs of Apple HD... that gets a little expensive.

I wonder if you can stick larger HDs in the drive slot... I've seen 160 gig HDs on the market. Or is the ATA spec the limiter here? Hmm... if the hardware allows it, in a year you could stick four 200 gig HDs in and gt .8 terabytes. Woohoo! Or 250 in two years.

[mac-at-kearsarge]

Sorry for the misplaced post, if a mod wants to move it down, please do so. I looked but didn't see any new spots for Xserver and thought this weas the correct place. Soory-my bad.

[maddjn]

Originally posted by cdhostage:
<STRONG>I wonder if you can stick larger HDs in the drive slot... I've seen 160 gig HDs on the market. Or is the ATA spec the limiter here? Hmm... if the hardware allows it, in a year you could stick four 200 gig HDs in and gt .8 terabytes. Woohoo! Or 250 in two years.</STRONG>

i heard something about a 120G-limit, but from the OS itself - so there might be some updates to push that limit...
but seriously - why would you want to have a terabyte of data on the server itself? if you want that much storage, you should go out getting that 14x120G-drive-array...

maddjn

[Eug]

Originally posted by cdhostage:
<STRONG>bump.

I disagree. Given the price comparisions of servers WITH similar clockspeeds of inferior chips, the G4 is actually cheaper.

Now, maxed out... 2 gigs of Apple-approved DDR RAM, 480 gigs of Apple HD... that gets a little expensive.

I wonder if you can stick larger HDs in the drive slot... I've seen 160 gig HDs on the market. Or is the ATA spec the limiter here? Hmm... if the hardware allows it, in a year you could stick four 200 gig HDs in and gt .8 terabytes. Woohoo! Or 250 in two years.</STRONG>

ATA 100 is limited to 120 MB.

The bigger question is why there isn't hardware SCSI RAID, as others have said.

[3dAnimation]

Why not SCSI RAID?

Because SCSI 3 times as expensive price/Gigabyte. Apple can't come out of the gates offering every config under the Sun. They went with a happy medium.

DON'T FORGET:
Xserver has available PCI slots. You can always add the drives externally on a Dual Ultra 320 Card from ATTO!

enjoy!
GregM.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by 3dAnimation:
<STRONG>Why not SCSI RAID?

Because SCSI 3 times as expensive price/Gigabyte. Apple can't come out of the gates offering every config under the Sun. They went with a happy medium.

DON'T FORGET:
Xserver has available PCI slots. You can always add the drives externally on a Dual Ultra 320 Card from ATTO!

enjoy!
GregM.</STRONG>

ATA RAID is fine with me (for non critical applications) it's plenty fast and fairly cheap. It's becoming more common.

The real problem with the storage is software RAID 0,1. Why the hell have 4 bays if you can't have RAID 5? What's the point?

Choice #1- you 240GB of data as speeds too slow to be useful for much more than occasional file services. Certianly aren't going to want to run a database on that.

Choice #2- gives you 480GB of data with no fault tolerance so when a drive goes (and they all do) you lose it all. External backup gives you 1 point of failure. Not enough by most IT standards. That means 2 external backups (tape, DVD-RAM, etc). Now you're talking serious money just to give you the bare minimum in fault tolerance.

External RAID array is fine, but I can run one of those off any machine with a PCI slot. Why buy Xserve for a PCI slot? It's all I/O, and you don't need much muscle to pass data to a RAID controller on your array.

[hempcamp]

Originally posted by 3dAnimation:
<STRONG>Why not SCSI RAID?

Because SCSI 3 times as expensive price/Gigabyte. Apple can't come out of the gates offering every config under the Sun...
Xserver has available PCI slots.</STRONG>

It is rather ironic that the company that brought SCSI to the mainstream is now the first to take it away from the sever line. I loathe ATA, which can eat up to 95% of your CPU time just shuffling data (cf. SCSI, only 5%).

But I do understand the benefits of ATA, particularly because it fits the acronym "redundant array of INEXPENSIVE disks" better. It certainly makes the Xserve more affordable for education, small businesses, etc. I suspect that big fish customers and graphics pros will stick with SCSI -- you can BTO with an Ultra160 controller for just $200.

In fact, if I were buying an Xserve (and I might in the next year or so), it would be nice to have cheap ATA drives for the system and applications to run from. I would still stick with an external Ultra160/320 array for mission critical data, storage, and scratch space. Dual channel Ultra160 (not to mention Ultra320) can whip the tails off of ATA/100 and ATA/133 not only in terms of speed, but also reliability.

--Chris
PM7500/604e 200Mhz
18GB U2W SCSI
256MB
OS 8.6

[moki]

Originally posted by hempcamp:
<STRONG>

It is rather ironic that the company that brought SCSI to the mainstream is now the first to take it away from the sever line. I loathe ATA, which can eat up to 95% of your CPU time just shuffling data (cf. SCSI, only 5%).</STRONG>

Since each hard drive has its own dedicated ATA card, I doubt that much CPU is being used to service it at all. The choice makes sense when you look at it in this light:


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.

[clarkgoble]

That speed for the ATA still isn't SCSI speed. Merely having a separate controller only makes a difference for some RAID timing. (At least it would seem that way as I think it through) Unfortunately no real benchmarks yet to see how it compares in real world. That theoretical picture is a bit of a pipe dream.

As for being competitive, unless you build your own machines, it is pretty price competitive. Not as much on the low end but it imporves as you move up the line. There's an interesting "theoretical" review over at OS News. I tend to think they're overestimating the speed of the G4 verses a P4 or Athalon myself. Further Apple didn't improve the bandwidth of the overall system as much as some had hoped. But a lot of how you view the server will depend upon what it is you are serving.

[Bernard Ducamp]

I think one big positive of XServe is the licensing issue. When you buy an XServe, you can hook up as many clients as you want at no further cost ("Unlimited Clients"). This can be pretty significant when you compare XServe with, say,.............Micro$oft's Server Licenses.

The other big positive is the UNIX foundation. This gives XServe and OS X credibility in the IT world, and in corporate computing.

[Bernard Ducamp]

I think one big positive of XServe is the licensing issue. When you buy an XServe, you can hook up as many clients as you want at no further cost ("Unlimited Clients"). This can be pretty significant when you compare XServe with, say,.............Micro$oft's Server Licenses.

The other big positive is the UNIX foundation. This gives XServe and OS X credibility in the IT world, and in corporate computing.