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.

Comments

Author shows his ignorance

[Kope]

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.

Re:Not seeing the argument to not run linux..

[IntlHarvester]

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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The Apache Game.

[TheReverand]

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 will never run Linux

[egarland]

Most consoles have heavy security mechanisims to make sure the machine will only play software that is properly licenced and that the manufacturer is getting a cut of the profits on. Only developer units can run unsigned titles. The regular customer units can not run arbitrary programs. That's how they can sell the hardware at a loss. They get make money on every piece of software that is allowed to run on the box.

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.