[simon steiner]

Will serial ATA and firewire 2/3 be better than SCSI or Fibre Channel, performance wise and replace them?

Do you believe Cat 7 will be produced or will there be a move over to fibre for lower end servers?

Can you create (easily?) a RAID between two servers if each server have one hard disk and so if one server goes down the other takes over?

From workingmac.com - inetd: Xserve: The hardware
"My own horrid experience with Windows NT's software RAID ensured that I will never use any version of Windows software RAID ever again."

A few weeks ago I set up software RAID 1 on Windows 2k server should I be worried?
Could you explain the problems you have with software RAID?

Is 64 bit computing right for the desktop, will general applications benefit once they are re-compiled and add 64 bit code?

[Camelot]

Originally posted by simon steiner:
Will serial ATA and firewire 2/3 be better than SCSI or Fibre Channel, performance wise and replace them?

Serial ATA is targeted as a replacement for the existing ATA architecture.

The first generation of Serial ATA runs at 150MB/sec, which is comparable with SCSI 160 (160MB/sec), although the latest SCSI spec runs at 320MB/sec.

However, it is entirely designed as an internal spec. No external connectors or devices are planned, cable length is less than 1m, it's storage-centric (no cameras, printers, etc.), and only supports host-to-device connectivity (no host-host connectivity).

Therefore, I expect Serial ATA to become the predominant interface for internal drives, with SCSI sticking around for RAID systems, and FireWire for digital device connections.

Do you believe Cat 7 will be produced or will there be a move over to fibre for lower end servers?

I think we're already seeing a move away from fibre in favor of copper (see the latest gigabit ethernet running over cat 5).

I think the major distinction will be in cable length. Fibre will remain predominant for longer cable lengths, and backbone connections.

Can you create (easily?) a RAID between two servers if each server have one hard disk and so if one server goes down the other takes over?

Depends on your definition of 'easy'

There are all kinds of issues that come into play when dealing with failover, most of which relate to data coherence. If you're dealing with mostly static pages, for example, it's a lot easier to do than when dealing with dynamic databases, for example.

In other words, need more info.

From workingmac.com - inetd: Xserve: The hardware
"My own horrid experience with Windows NT's software RAID ensured that I will never use any version of Windows software RAID ever again."

A few weeks ago I set up software RAID 1 on Windows 2k server should I be worried?
Could you explain the problems you have with software RAID?

Actually, my experience of setting up RAID in Windows NT and W2K has been pretty good - it's pretty straightforward and easy. I don't know what issues the author had.

Is 64 bit computing right for the desktop, will general applications benefit once they are re-compiled and add 64 bit code?

In general most users will never notice the difference between a 64-bit and a 32-bit OS. Contrary to popular belief, 64-bit apps are not necessarily faster than 32-bit apps. The primary difference is the addressable memory they can use - which is great for massive data-intensive applications, but your average user is never going to notice the difference.

[simon steiner]

I remember hearing that 2GB is the maximum amount of memory supported by a 32 bit OS but Windows Advanced Server supports 4GB and Windows Enterprise Server supports 8GB whilst they still run on 32 bit CPUs, how does this work?

When you consider how much Mac OS X sucks up, hearing that someone has 1.5GB in their machine isn't uncommon. Can this limitation be broken (I imagine MS has already done this from the above paragraph?

Since Apple has employed the guy who worked on BeFS I wonder what his aims will be to create a new filing system. Could Apple use say a FS that doesn�t support resource forks? How could you store icons and preview images without using some kind of package format (so its keeps them when you transfer them over the internet).

Maybe a system for this already exists, do Mac users want to wipe their hands of resource forks and type/creator and rely on extensions.
What have the NeXT guys implemented on Open/NeXTStep?

Is it possible to take say XFS/BeFS and add support for resource forks/ comments.
I know apple has this resource fork into data fork system but 9 users cant access that. If you save a JPEG in that format most other OSes wont recognise them?

Why do Apple continually say that MPEG-4 audio is the best out there when its been proven in test that WMA/ MP3 Pro/ Ogg is better (try for yourself), is the QT6 implementation finished?

Does someone know what program on windows that reads JPEG2000?

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by simon steiner:
I remember hearing that 2GB is the maximum amount of memory supported by a 32 bit OS but Windows Advanced Server supports 4GB and Windows Enterprise Server supports 8GB whilst they still run on 32 bit CPUs, how does this work?

When you consider how much Mac OS X sucks up, hearing that someone has 1.5GB in their machine isn't uncommon. Can this limitation be broken (I imagine MS has already done this from the above paragraph?

4GB is the limit, and most current procs use 36 bit addressing instead of 32, which gives terabytes of storage, I believe. It's totally hardware.

BTW, I'd recommend posting questions in the correct forums, it helps to get good answers, and it helps others searching for those same answers.

[Camelot]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
BTW, I'd recommend posting questions in the correct forums, it helps to get good answers, and it helps others searching for those same answers.

Not to mention, of course, using a subject line that has SOME (any?) relevance to the discussion