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Xbox As A Server Farm Commodity Box
ballpoint writes: "Yahoo has this story suggesting the Xbox as a cheap platform for a web server, by packaging Apache as a game. The article was written by Adam Barr, an ex-Microsoft employee who previously suggested running Linux on the Xbox. I suppose there are still more 'games' for the Xbox in the pipeline." With all the talk about making Dreamcasts into rendering farms, perhaps that would be a good application as well.
If Microsoft goes into the hardware business, especially the server hardware business, then you can bet your last nickel that the hardware OEMs will go on a media frenzy about how cool their new "Linux application servers" are. The last thing that the OEMs are going to allow is for Microsoft to undercut them in their fastest growing market. Since they won't be able to compete with Microsoft on price (MS gets Windows for free) they will have no choice but to use Linux to make up the difference.
Linux servers made by folks that make inexpensive hardware for a living are very likely to be less expensive than the best that Microsoft can do.
My guess is that the Blade Server edition will simply be a low-cost slimmed down version of Windows 2000. Of course, it will probably have very limited use, and it will still be more expensive than free. Microsoft can try and compete in the low cost arena, but my guess is that they haven't got a prayer. Linux is nearly a match for the best that Microsoft can throw at it in the server arena. A cut rate version of Windows would look positively anemic compared to what you get for free with Linux.
Microsoft's only chance, in the web hosting arena, is to fold more features into the OS. Heck, I wouldn't personally even consider Microsoft for my web servers until it could touch the usefulness I get out of Linux, PostgreSQL, and Zope at a low basic price (and with nicer interfaces). Those tools may be harder to learn, but the knowledge pays for itself easily over time.
The author shows his ignorance by comparing raw storage cost with a network storage device. While the network storage device certainly is more expensive per gig, it also likely supports every RAID level imaginable, with multiple hardware redundancies. I would imagine that it probably supports fibre either out of the box or with a reasonable add-on. And it likely does a doze other things "correctly" from an enterprise computing point of view.
Yeah, the X-toy beats it in terms of raw storgage costs, but what level of support will Microsoft give you if your X-box goes up in flames? I've used a number of different network storage devices that had support available that rivals Sun -- if you box goes down you can have an engineer on-site fixing it in a matter of a few hours.
While the x-toy might make a fine web-server for a very low end, low volume site, it wouldn't handle anything that really takes a beating. Morevoer, any IS manager who puts anything close to mission critical on such a machine would be fired within minutes of such a decision being discovered. And deservidly so!!
The x-toy is going to be cheap hardware, good for some toy uses, but no company (and certainly no IS manager) who knows computing is going to ever do anything of real significance on this machine. It simply isn't designed to be the kind of durable, dependable, servicable, supportable, supported hardware that companies demand. The days of running your company on your kids Apple IIc (or its modern day equivilant - the X-toy) are over.
They can use the legal precident of the video game consoles to back the actions up in court....
I think you are blowing hot air -- there are no such legal standards. In fact, just the opposite: Sega sued Accolade (?) for actually including a "Sega(tm)" logo in a unlicenced game. Accolade won because it turned out the console wouldn't boot unless the game contained that bitmap, so breaking copyright was necessary for interoperability.
As Atari versus Activision proved, there is no way a console company can required 3rd parties to obtain a licence to produce software, in the US.
However, licencing has become common for a few reasons:
1) Forcing 3rd parties to licence is legal in Japan, a big market. (This plus Nintendo's US patented cart slot pretty much required 3rd parties to deal with Nintendo.)
2) Game systems have gotten so complex hardware-wise that it's useful to be on the official dev program and get the docs and SDKs.
3) Game systems can use crypto keys to autheniticate media. The first system to do this was the Atari 7800, BTW, but apparently MS will also be implementing this in the XBox.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I thought Microsoft has announced that there will be some sort of crypto verification in the bootcode of the thing to prevent people from running non-approved software. (If they didn't, their game licencing plan will just be bypassed.)
I believe the quote was "If someone gets Linux running on the XBox, there's a job waiting at Microsoft for them."
Anyway, check ZDNet about Microsoft's murmuring about a Win XP "Blade Server" edition. Essentially a stripped down web server setup designed to compete with Linux/Unix that will no doubt have it's own specialized set of server hardware. MS has enough resources to keep this project seperate from the XBox (and keep the traditional Windows hardware OEMs happy).
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Is it possible for MS to lock the hardware to prevent alternative OS images from running on it? Obviously there's a limit as to how much they can prevent the determined screwdriver and soldering iron weilding hardware hacker from subverting the hardware, but I'm thinking of some kind of integrated componentry that would power the machine off or otherwise cripple it unless an MS-approved OS or application was running on it.
Such a lock might fall short of someone really talented, but the vast majority of dilettantes looking for a low budget server box (including people who want farms) may be totally stuck with a games-only machine.
I'm not sure I see why you wouldn't want just run linux on the thing. Remote administration would be far easier - if you could come up with an install that didn't need any console input you would never need to create drivers for keyboard/mouse/video in linux, and beyond that its just an intel chip anyway so you don't need to do any major kernel hacking. If you're thinking of using these to sell web hosting, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to have an OS that will allow full remote configuration and access, instead of hacking a stripped down OS up to functionallity? Who knows how "broken" the version of win2k on Xbox is, but I'm guessing it wont be just a matter of running an apache installer, so why not use the time getting linux/bsd booting on it instead of a single app?
Eh, we know both will happen in the end anyway..
My favorite level is 'holes and hackers'. I just love patching my security holes before 1377 k7dd7ez come in and 0wn m3.
The X-Box may share a lot of architecture with PC's but this definitely not going to be a PC. It's a console and it will have standard console restrictions on what it can do. There were easy ways around this on the Dreamcast. There won't be on the X-Box.
It'll be interesting to see if Microsoft will try to start with the X-Box as a video game console and slowly migrate the closed harware platform to be in the mainstream business PC's space. This could be their answer to the Linux threat. A closed PC hardware platform that only runs Microsoft approved software. They can use the legal precident of the video game consoles to back the actions up in court....
Think about it.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
Now I feel good about buying xboxlinux.com a year ago, I knew this was going to happen :)
Hammer of Truth
If these things will overheat?
I know playstations get awful hot,
kind of like laptops, they aren't meant to run 24/7/365.25
I have a p75 as my server sitting under my steps in my room, it has no fans, and is cold to the touch, the heatsink is barely luke warm.
These things are so packed together, they probably start resetting themeselves after a couple hours, usually at the end of the 10th level too.
on OSOpinion.
One of the points brought up about using the XBox for apache server farms was the commercial appearance. Imagine you are walking through a potential webhosting location that you are considering to host you new online business and you see your pages being served up by XBoxes. How fast would you be out of there?
Someone doing this would be a prime candidate for both fuckedcompany.com and the top 100 dumbest dot com moments.
As consoles and other 'consumer' technology gets more and more complex, software and firmware become more and more real a problem. For example, my VCR never has any logic problems, but my APEX DVD player will occasionally fail to start a next chapter, or will garble the sound and video. It's MPEG2 drivers have apparently crashed, and the machine has to be powercycled to start running again.
Being that the Xbox is going to use a Pentium 3 processor, a piece of silicon that we *know* has at least a few minor bugs, and M$ software, I think we can be assured of having at least an occasional crash. Possibly, especially under heavy load as a webserver, this will be more often than corresponding Linux or BSD crashes, making it unsuitable for use as a webserver.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Microsoft is interested in profits. Their angle on the XBox is that they will make money in the games and licensing fees, i presume.
If, after 2 months, MS finds that everyone's buying the hardware (at negative margins for MS) and not buying any software (and using Apache, nonetheless) - they'll do something to block this practice, or raise the prices to the point where this will become profitable.
the second will not happen either, as MS will be very disinclined to make inroads into the server for fear of anti-trust legislation (okay, OS, software, hardware... that'd do it...) and industry alliances with vendors who pre-package windows.
great idea, but like napster, has a critical mass beyond which it will become it's own worst enemy.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.