[OreoCookie]

I think you have a completely different thing in mind.
I remember once one of the workstations failed in the cluster a few years ago, it was a Compaq AlphaStation for $20,000. Fortunately the university hasn't saved money on warranty, coz both cpus ($2,500 a piece) and the RAM ($2,500) needed to be swapped Now THAT's a chunk of change right there.

For a server that allows you to change RAM on the fly, you have to pay a lot, lot more (there you need basically a RAM RAID) and is overkill. Apple's XServe and most other servers in its class offer hot-swappable harddrives, but not hot-swappable fans. However, those servers are designed to keep on running even if one fan fails. The more expensive a server, the more likely you will have those features. I'm not sure why you go to such lengths to drive the point that Apple is not a server manufacturer. It isn't. Just look at their product portfolio.

It's not even useful to ask for the features you think are necessary to be in a server. Enterprise servers, by the way, are the really big-iron systems with 16+ cpus, etc. Since the RAM of these beasts is worth a few XServes alone, it wouldn't be fair to compare their feature sets with that of entry-level servers -- which the XServe and the DL360 are. (For IBM, an enterprise-level server would look something like this. At my department, we are more modest and have this baby in our basement -- apparently Sun considers a $12,000+ machine to be an entry-level server )

You don't necessarily need hot-swappable RAM to be an acceptable solution for mission-critical tasks, you might just use google's solution instead. So overall, I think the XServe is a nice offering and Apple doesn't make the mistake pretending it is something it is not: a server manufacturer. Better leave that to Sun, IBM and HP.

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by besson3c

Does Apple's premiun warranty thing offer on-site support? How quickly do they promise they can get there?

Yes, even their base warranty offers on-site support (but only if the issue wasn't resolved over the phone.) Their premium is within 4 hours.

At the college I was working at, we had a dual G4 XServe. It was about a year old, but Apple gave us a free base Warranty on it as part of an educational deal. After about a year we noticed that about once a week we'd come in and the XServe was shut off. No one turned it off, we just walked in and it was off.

So we called Apple the next morning and we went through the basic troubleshooting. After taking various components out and puting them back in, the XServe booted back up. The problem then was that the monitor it was connected to kept going black after abou 10 minutes, then the yellow Warning light came on.

So Apple sent a technician out, 4 hour turnaround. The guy showed up in about 2 hours. Felt sorry for him cuz the AC in his van died and it was 103 degrees outside. So he finally came in got to work immediately on the XServe. Brought in a few boxes with various parts. He sat down with a diagnostic machine. It plugged into various ports and he ran it, told him if the mobo was OK, and other stuff.

The weird part was that the parts were checking out, but there was obviously a problem. So he ended up swapping almost everything. When he didn't have one part in his van, he called another tech, but that guy was out and couldn't make it over. So he zipped back to Sacramento (a 40 minute drive) snagged it, then zipped back.

The guy was bending over backwards to get our XServe to work. Eventually, after replacing almost every part, the XServe was finally back up and going. He didn't stop there, either. He called into Apple and ordered us (FOR FREE!) a dual G5 XServe because he was convinced there was something else wrong with the XServe and it should just go back to the shop.

So even after he fixed the G4 XServe, we got a G5 XServe in the mail shortly after. We unpacked it, set it up, packed the G4 XServe in the return box and sent it back.


I'd say that Apple's base support is nothing short of phenominal. Their highend warranty also includes a special direct line so you don't have to go through normal AppleCare, and you can talk to real Apple technicians.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

I think you have a completely different thing in mind.
I remember once one of the workstations failed in the cluster a few years ago, it was a Compaq AlphaStation for $20,000. Fortunately the university hasn't saved money on warranty, coz both cpus ($2,500 a piece) and the RAM ($2,500) needed to be swapped Now THAT's a chunk of change right there.

For a server that allows you to change RAM on the fly, you have to pay a lot, lot more (there you need basically a RAM RAID) and is overkill. Apple's XServe and most other servers in its class offer hot-swappable harddrives, but not hot-swappable fans. However, those servers are designed to keep on running even if one fan fails. The more expensive a server, the more likely you will have those features. I'm not sure why you go to such lengths to drive the point that Apple is not a server manufacturer. It isn't. Just look at their product portfolio.

It's not even useful to ask for the features you think are necessary to be in a server. Enterprise servers, by the way, are the really big-iron systems with 16+ cpus, etc. Since the RAM of these beasts is worth a few XServes alone, it wouldn't be fair to compare their feature sets with that of entry-level servers -- which the XServe and the DL360 are. (For IBM, an enterprise-level server would look something like this. At my department, we are more modest and have this baby in our basement -- apparently Sun considers a $12,000+ machine to be an entry-level server )

You don't necessarily need hot-swappable RAM to be an acceptable solution for mission-critical tasks, you might just use google's solution instead. So overall, I think the XServe is a nice offering and Apple doesn't make the mistake pretending it is something it is not: a server manufacturer. Better leave that to Sun, IBM and HP.

I agree with you. I acknowledge my mistake in the pricing of the thing, that was my main beef which has since been put to rest thanks to you

In our environment, our team feels that hot swappable RAM is worth the price on our SMTP servers, which send 2-3 million messages a day. These machines operate in a cluster, so it is possible to take out of the cluster, but another part of this decision is the nature of our state funding. I don't know exacty what I'm sharing this, I guess I'm thinking that you might be slightly interested

The one thing that I find a little disconcerting about the XServe though is the way it is marketted suggestively as a quad processor machine. This is addressed in my other thread, so I'll spare you further detail

[OreoCookie]

The reason for this marketing thing is not a peculiarity of Apple, but it's something virtually all server manufacturers do. The origins lie with AMD: you can usually configure AMD servers with single-core or dual-core Opterons. And since a dual dual-core Opteron system easily outperforms -- say -- a P4-based dual single-core Xeon system, people began counting cores.

So as long as people count cores instead of cpus (which is what HP, IBM and Sun do, too), I have no problem with that, it's accurate information and not a marketing ploy. Since a 4-way machine now has eight cores, the temptation to compare a dual dual-core system with a quad single-core system will quickly wear off, too

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

The reason for this marketing thing is not a peculiarity of Apple, but it's something virtually all server manufacturers do. The origins lie with AMD: you can usually configure AMD servers with single-core or dual-core Opterons. And since a dual dual-core Opteron system easily outperforms -- say -- a P4-based dual single-core Xeon system, people began counting cores.

So as long as people count cores instead of cpus (which is what HP, IBM and Sun do, too), I have no problem with that, it's accurate information and not a marketing ploy. Since a 4-way machine now has eight cores, the temptation to compare a dual dual-core system with a quad single-core system will quickly wear off, too

Okay, you have complicated my thinking on this, but remember when we were looking at that HP server together? That additional 2.00 Ghz CPU cost $750, right? All I'm saying is, the industry needs to figure out how to deal with this and communicate this in an accurate and non-misleading way, just like they have to with the Ghz wars - something we have struggled with for years.

One thing that having 2 actual CPUs buys the customer is that in some machines (Solaris boxes for instance), a failing processor will fail-over to the spare. Moreover, like I said, that additional CPU is reflected in the final cost of the hardware.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by besson3c

Okay, you have complicated my thinking on this, but remember when we were looking at that HP server together? That additional 2.00 Ghz CPU cost $750, right? All I'm saying is, the industry needs to figure out how to deal with this and communicate this in an accurate and non-misleading way, just like they have to with the Ghz wars - something we have struggled with for years.

They have by counting cores. It's not like the MHz myth at all since you can measure the speed of one core separately from the speed of the cpu. By comparing SPECint and SPECfp marks of your favorite cpu (say a PPC970 or an Opteron) with Woodcrest's scores, you can compare the speed of the different cores. You can also disable all cores but one and run any other benchmark you'd like -- and end up with some measure of the performance.

So I'm left wondering why you are objecting to this scheme which is fair and pretty much universally accepted. Just a little exercise: Sun's UltraSPARC T1 cpu has eight cores. Each core can handle 4 threads simultaneously (by what Intel calls Hyperthreading) and Sun rightfully says that the cpu can handle 32 concurrent threads, but that the server has 1 cpu with 8 cores.

Originally Posted by besson3c

One thing that having 2 actual CPUs buys the customer is that in some machines (Solaris boxes for instance), a failing processor will fail-over to the spare. Moreover, like I said, that additional CPU is reflected in the final cost of the hardware.

Huh, how is this relevant in this discussion? I haven't seen a two-way system that had this capability, just much larger ones whose price-point is way beyond what we're discussing here.