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Apple Introduces Xserve Rackmount Servers
2nd Post! writes "MacCentral is reporting the announcement of 1U Apple rackmount hardware. The Xserve, despite its cheesy name, seems quite powerful: dual G4/1GHz with 4MB DDR L3 cache, up to 2GB DDR (yes!) SDRAM, 4 ATA drive bays (up to 480GB), 2 Gb Ethernet ports, 2 64/66 PCI slots (one of which may be taken up by one Gb Ethernet card), and, of course, FireWire. Pricing starts at $2,999 for a single 60GB disk and 256MB RAM." Yahoo! has posted the press release; Doc Searls is writing about Jobs' speech. Update: 05/14 18:14 GMT by M : Apple's page about the Xserve is now live.
OMG
Apple sleek hardware + 1U Rack Mount Server + Kick Ass Unix with the sweetest GUI on the market + Gigabit Ethernet + Unlimited Client License included
*Faints*
I feel like a 12-year-old girl at a Backstreet Boys concert.
*Screams*
They've got a 3U, dual fiber channel, 14 drive RAID Xserver in the works. Keep a lookout for those ;)
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
The original specs are wrong, it's $2999 for the SINGLE 1 GHz G4, $3999 for the dual. Not as sweet a deal, but still not too bad.
I imagine this is going to be a hit with universities, especially those that already use Macintosh client units.
I think the RAID server that they announced (not shipping until later) will be pretty hot, too...
- 3U height
- 14 bays
- Fourteen 120 gB ATA drives (hot pluggable)
- 1.68 tB
- dual 2GB Fibre Channel on system
- 400 mB/second storage throughput
At $3,000, this is a fairly good solution. I just wonder what this "repair kit" will include??
jrbd
So does that mean the constant rumour of Apple buying (or bought by) Sun/SGI/whatnot will die now? Clearly Apple can make its own servers.
BTW Why did they choose ATA drives over SCSI?
Unless I misunderstood, the XServe has two 64bit PCI slots, and only one is used (by an ethernet card). The other ethernet port is onboard. This leaves one slot free, or two if you don't need to ethernet ports.
What, am I the only one who wants to have a rack of these and a kvm switch built into his desk?
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
It wouldn't make sense for them not to...Remote Desktop is a perfect way to deal with any must-be-local issues. I assume that all server management programs can be run remotely, since they ran a server manager that identified all locally-running Xserves.
Probably something similar to their old Mac Manager Server.
And telnet's disabled by default, you have to ssh in
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
This looks to be the case. However it could also read as having three PCI slots with two 64bit slots free. Its hard to tell at this point.
But I may have jumped the gun a bit in with my criticism on that point.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
This wasn't mentioned in the press release but seems like a pretty big deal and come from the MacCentral coverage: "Introduces Mike Rocha, senior vice president, Platform Tech, Oracle: Oracle 9i on OS X -- we very excited about this hardware. Oracle is about low-cost clustering. Future releases will be on-time, synchronous. When we use UNIX native support, native APIs, optimized for this hardware, we can synchronize our releases so that our customers can have unified database versions across different hardware platforms. "
the $1000 price increase also includes a 2nd 1gHz G4. they failed to mention that the first one is single proc.
A computer without a Microsoft operating system is like a dog without bricks tied to its head
you can access the machine using the Mac OSX gui, remotely. I think this is meant to be headless, but using the admin tools you can bring up a desktop view of it on another machine if you wish.
Only the HFS+ filesystem does.
Not only did they fail to mention it, they claim it was dual.
"1GHz dual 256MB DDR and a 60GB hard disk for $2999 -- 1GHz dual 512 MB DDR with a 60GB for $3999."
Ah well, if the 2999$ one is sinlge CPU then thats not TOO bad pricewise. Well within the normal Apple mark up (jk).
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
1000$ for an extra 256megs of Apple blessed DDR
Apple's RAM is always overpriced, just like most OEMs. So you buy extra RAM 3rd party, as usual.
IDE just as fast as SCSI my ass
True, but Ultra3 is an obvious expansion option.
No expansion slots. The second gigabit network card takes up the only PCI slot
I'm not sure where you got that idea. The press release says: "three PCI slots, two of which are 64-bit, 66 MHz". I have no clue how they fit 3 PCIs and 4 bays into a 1U box, but I sure am glad.
- If you want a pure Unix experience at the command line, install OS X on UFS. Trivial. Works. Breaks some third party apps that are Carbon based, but you'll likely not care (I don't).
- porting: Most packages compile out of the bag or with very little in the way of patching (a lot only require a couple of command line arguments. Fink.sourceforge.net currently has 1100 packages 'ported' to OS X, all fully managed by the debian package manager.
Fink has certainly grown in size since your purchase, but not much else has changed.
As James Gosling recently said: "OS X is like Linux, only with Q/A [Quality Assurance] and taste!".
Actually, all you have to do is just use UFS as you filesystem (as opposed to HFS+) you can get around that issue.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
Well, I'm disappointed. Everything else about this looks really nice, obviously.
Hm, thinking about famous systems that use IDE drives...think they're trying to appeal to Google?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
It looks like the release has been changing a bit. The first glance I had of it was when it was first posted (prior to it showing up on Slashdot). At that time it simply stated that a second gigabit card took up the PCI slot with no mention of any other expansion slots. Later it listed two 64bit PCI slots so I assumed that the network card was in one. Now it lists three slots with one being dedicated to the second NIC. Ah well, having two free slots is much better.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Well the dell *looked* good, but lets see:
Windows 2000 Advanced Server with 25 Client Licenses [add $3295]
VersaRails for Non-Dell 4-Post Rack [add $129]
Dell Remote Assistant Card Version 3 without Modem [add $499]
73GB 10K RPM Ultra 160 SCSI Hard Drive [add $550]
Intel Pro 1000XT Gigabit NIC-Copper [add $189]
Total cost - $6,459.00
But maybe you wanted Linux - $3,323.00
I won't really get into the who SCSI/IDE debate, suffice to say Apple announced a Fibre Raid with 400MB through put, it you really want it. Shipping in Q4 with 1.48 TB of space in a 3U, all hot swappable. The Apple prices are spot on for all the features they bring. IMHO of course.
People think Microsoft is the answer. Microsoft is just the question, "No" is the answer.
The IDE drives worry me. Sure IDE is getting fast, but good SCSI drives are still faster. Also, IDE drives don't seem to have the reliability that SCSI drives do. Desktop drives fail all the time, but we rarely have good SCSI drives fail.
FYI: That's the way HFS/HFS+ is designed, it's a case-preserving, but case-insensitive system.
This has been written about in ARSTechnica and other good interface-analysis sites.
Frankly, this is a GOOD thing. There's no reason the user/sysadmin needs to have case-distinguishable file names. A filename's purpose is to serve as an identifiable label which a human can recognize the file by. There's no good reason why "readme" and "README" should refer to two separate files. If you have two readme files, they should be named differently.
The case-preserving aspect is important because it reminds all involved that the user is in control, not the OS. If you want to name something "sysTEM FOLDer", the OS should identify it as such, but if someone else wants to get to the "system folder", the OS needs to be smart enough to recognize that that's what you're refering to.
Calling someone "brian smith", or "Brian Smith", or "BRIAN SMITH" doesn't change the identify of the person you're calling.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Someone definitely needs to learn the difference between a filesystem and an OS. Did you also bring back your Linux box because it had the same problem when you inserted a FAT formatted floppy?
Donate free food here
What a rip off. Where I work everything except some insignificant stuff is on at least RAID 1. Why would I go the Apple route when I can get a server form Dell or Compaq with SCSI RAID for less? My company is Win2000, but Dell and Compaq also support Linux on servers. Another Apple rip off.
Case-sensitivity is a PITB. When you speak a filename to someone, how does the difference in capitalization sound? Apple took the user-oriented solution of making case irrelevant. The only people that presume that case-sensitivity in something as accessible as the filename is a good thing are geeks. If we want our source code to be case-sensitive, fine. As far as filenames go, "CT Stuff" and "ct stuff" should mean the same thing. Making case the only difference between two names is as bad as calling your variables x instead of millisecondsBeforeShuttleLaunch.
Some may dismiss this as pandering to "lusers". Yet case-sensitivity makes your life harder, too. Claiming it's a desirable feature is just a way of trying to show off how 31337 you are. No one's impressed that you can type mixed-case filenames. The rest of us just want to get work done.
Constitutionally Correct
If you install OSX with UFS (Unix Filesystem) you get the case sensitivity. I dunno if you miss out on features that are in the other filesystem... But you would get what you wanted.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Nice rack.
*dodges hurled items*
The DELL has dual gigabit on board, you dont need the Intel Pro 1000XT card unless you want more then two ports. In which case you would have to add one to the Apple as well.
As for the OS, whats wrong with Linux? Given the market that Apple is targeting it would seem like a more logical choice.
"73GB 10K RPM Ultra 160 SCSI Hard Drive [add $550] " Ok, so how much to add this to the Apple? You seem to want to configure the DELL with a lot of stuff that the Apple dosn't have in order to drive the price up. This is not how you do a fair comparison, but it does seem to be how Apple does things. Which is a pity as I've allways felt that their hardware stands up rather well on its own without resorting to that kind of BS.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
shipping by the end of the year, no price yet...
3U height
*14 drive bays
*14 120GB ATA drives - in same hot-plug format as Xserve
*1.68TB
*Dual 2GB Fibre Channel on system
*400MB/second storage throughput
full info posted at apple.com any time now
As for Joe Consumer....there's what, 6 people who want a "rackmount for the rest of us"? For starters, you need a rack to put it in....
The peculiarities of OSX make me shudder
Zentec, your post seems to be a moderately well-constructed troll. The only problem you mentioned in specific is that HFS file systems are case preserving but insensitive, and there's a trivial solution to that.
Not sure I'd want to run a webserver on OSX.
You mean like this?
This may not be immediately obvious, but the low power requirements of the g4 chip can provide a big advantage here.
From apple's site: Typical continuous power: 125W (single-processor system); 175W (dual processor system).
On a desktop, this doesn't make that huge of a difference, but when you fill a room full of these rackmounts, the electricity savings quickly being to add up. Then you can figure in cooling costs. Lower power consumption results in less generated heat and far lower cooling bills.
It comes with Blinkenlights for the two processor, just like the good old BeBox
That alone is worth $4k
P.S.:These machines actually cluster. Now imagine a rack full of clustered 1U G4s, all with psychedelic Blinkenlights showing activity.
However, what is the point of a Mac server? I don't see any advantage to OS X Server over Linux, and x86 hardware is still cheaper and has better performance than PPC hardware.
If you look closely at the Quicktime animation on the page describing the Server Management software, one of the frames shows that the server is running Mac OS X Server 10.1.5.
SCSI was only faster because IDE puts a slight load on the main processor(s) to do its read/writes. This has become a non-issue lately with today's high processor speeds.
This 1u Xserve is laking expansion, but if you need expansion, Apple is making a 3U version that should serve your needs.
Everything isn't always about price! I wish people would start realizing this. Dell's $1,500 server uses Intel 32bit processors, Apple's uses PPC 64bit processors. Think operating system here too. Apple gives you OS X, which is seriously a kick-ass OS. Dell pushes Windows on you, and if your smart you go with Linux, BUT both OSes are lacking some of either the stability (former) or features (latter) of OS X. I don't care what anyone says, Windows is the absolute WORST server operating system out there. Desktop home PC fine, workstation, okay, if that's what you like, server, no way. I doesn't belong in the server room. Linux on the other hand is a nice OS, but lacks some of the features of Darwin, the most important that comes to mind is pre-emptive muti-tasking and asychronous I/O. If you are deploying java apps, you should seriously consider OS X too. Apple's java implementation is far superior to either IBM or Sun's JVMs for Linux.
My point here is not really to bash Intel boxes - I use Linux heavily myself - but just to point out that you just might be getting a little more for your money out of that Apple Xserve than you are from the cheap Dell.
True.. but the isn't Googles big ass cluster run on IDE?? When you spread things out in clusters your more limmited by your network than your HD throughput and access time.. In a single server setting with severial clients accessing the system at a time SCSI DOES perform far better..
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
This is the best gaming machine Apple has ever made! Mmmm..DDR + Radeon 8500 + 2x1Ghz G4's. EV Nova will never have run better.
Education?
What schools want to pay that much for a server? A sub-$1000 server appliance would be FAR more appropriate for that market.
Science/Professionals?
Many of these people are no less "geeky" than the slashdot crowd. It is foolish to presume that they need something dumbed down or want servers from Apple.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
its in the management graphic. i want that too
I want 2D games back.
The mac sites reporting from the meeting at apple got it wrong... according to the Xserve site that just went up, there are 3 PCI slots, 1 is used, so you get 2 free! Wow... I'm shocked... Thats very very good...
-Tripp
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.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
As James Gosling recently said: "OS X is like Linux, only with Q/A [Quality Assurance] and taste!".
;)
Well, the QA thing is bullshit - Red Hat does some serious Q&A and torture testing of their releases. What interested me more was the other half of that....
TASTE?!
They overlooked the GNU toolchain and went BSD instead, and you're telling me it's got "taste"?
The Free desktop that Just Works
I have no clue how they fit 3 PCIs and 4 bays into a 1U box, but I sure am glad.
They have one stack on the left for 64 bit PCI and one on the right with the 32 bit PCI. This is like
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
notice the Xserve uses the same font as the eMac on the web site? also the layout changes for applecare site .. hmmmm something is afoot
If I understand correctly, this is a signficant differentiator between Apple's offerings and companies providing Windows XP on their servers. This is because the hardware OEM would have to negotiate a great deal with Microsoft to do a similar "unlimited deal". Either that, or they'd have to absorb the costs, an unlikely scenario.
Of course, the hardware OEM could install Linux instead, but we all know that Microsoft generally frowns on OEMs picking between Windows and Linux:
Source was eWeek, March 18, 2002.
So, if Apple sees any sort of success with Xserve, you'll probably see the other OEMs putting pressure on Microsoft to let them offer Linux or at least reduce their Windows licensing fees, meaning more, cheaper choices for the customers.
I guess competition is good after all.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
They're positioning this server (according to MacWorld) against, among other things, Sun's 280R.
Let's see here:
The 280R has dual redundant power supplies, can have up to 4 CPUs, gigabytes more memory, is SCSI-based, and, since it's 5RU, has a ton more expandability.
The main comparison point Apple chose to use? Available disk bays, and price. Who do they think they're fooling when they claim that an IDE-based XServer will be comparable to a $20k enterprise-ready server?
Man, the crack in Cupertino must be good.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
>> Apple's RAM is always overpriced, just like
>> most OEMs. So you buy extra RAM 3rd party, as
>> usual.
Yes, and as soon as you call "Apple Support" complaining about problems they will start off by blaming those 3rd party components.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I was sitting at my desk, just decided to buy a Mac workstation for myself, doing a little window-shopping (well, Mac-shopping...getting rid of 'doze...). Browsed on over to store.apple.com, saw that they were temporarily down, pending update (loved the Post-It note!). Looked at their homepage, and saw the box...am I the only one who damn near wet himself when I saw that?
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
Work for Change & GET PAID!
The Dead Milkmen! I haven't heard them in years.
--
Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things.
Let's get down and dirty then, shall we:
- you are right no need for a NIC card. $189 big deal
- but the rest is needed to match the level of services Apple is offering
- how much for UNLIMITED client license with Windows? Let's go for Linux shall we...
- where is the DDR ram?
- Dell has twice the L2 ram, but what about L3 ram?
- where is the forth hard drive?
- $1500, but 18GB HD? I think an upgrade is needed there...
- max internal storage? 219GB against 480GB, and that's very important
- let's mention the lack of Firewire, but no big deal there
Conclusion: Dell is not a clear winner.
--kTag
If you want to deal with vendor pricing on components, then you might as well just deal with Sun, or even Dell. They both have a track record in this enviroment. Otherwise, you might as well get a white box system and save loads of money.
You don't address what value the bitness of the CPU brings into the equation. Also, your comments on Linux are extremely misinformed.
I seriously doubt that you've been anywhere near a Linux installation, ever.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"Digital video professionals who are thinking of using Xserve as a rackmount workstation...if you order your unit with an AGP 4X card, your Xserve will come with the card installed in an AGP riser that fits in a PCI slot."
So...does it run at PCI speeds or AGP speeds?
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Apple's small server
just 1U so powerful
I think I have wood
Increasingly Audio/Video production is becoming de-centrelized to the point where editors and producers need to be able to work from a common source that addresses "thier" needs. Not the needs of gamers or SOHO admins.
Since the production work is mostly done on Macs it makes perfect sense to use a Mac server.
Cost of hardware has always been secondary to quality of workflow and consistency in delivering the end product. (meaning: the shit should just work! and it should work the way you'd expect)
Face it, we pay THOUSANDS for audio cards and video equipment. We are not home "tinkerers" and dont want to tinker with our servers.
If these Xservers can also double as workstations 2 birds go down with one stone.
Windows admins and Linux hobbiests will never get it.
Go Apple !
"Corporate rock still sucks. What are you gonna do about it?"
They fixed that, from this model forward Apple don't support CD's or DVD's. If you miss them that's what the Ipod etc are for...
My second point would be - what on earth is this for?
I was thinking the exact same thing. Although I don't particularly like Apple computers, they do have characteristics that make them ideal for certain industries (specificially the publishing industry) but why would you ever need/want an Apple brand server?
What does having an Apple server gain you that having an Intel/Linux server wouldn't?
Not trying to be a smart ass (honest!) just curious...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
I still think you are crazy. All the sources I have seen say that linux has preemptive multitasking. Perhaps you are talking about having a preemptive kernel (or something like that, I'm a bit hazy on the details), and there is a rather experimental patch for that. But Linux has supported preemptive multitasking for a long time. This differs from the systems used by old MacOSes and Win3.x, but pretty much all modern OSes support preemptive multitasking. Please don't spread misinformation.
Yeah, but do you also want your desk sounding like a jet engine?
If I had a rack of xserves, I can buy earplugs.
Your iRack is about to suffer a real-life DoS.
Exactly.. this is a pretty big deal. Between the whole "look, a server OS that a half-idiot can configure with reasonable licensing policies" thing and the tools that seem to provide remote administration done right (apple remote desktop and this crazy looking manager thing, apple seems to have suddenly gotten a bunch of stuff right that no one ever quite has before.
.. this could definitely turn into a real, credible threat to windows XP.
I can only just hope and pray with all my might that apple doesn't let this opportunity slipt hrough their fingers. I mean, this isn't the most impressive box i've ever seen, esp. compared to some high-end UNIX setups, and traditional Unices probably still are more reliable and powerful for some stuff, but the tradeoffs you have to go through with this XServe are certainly no more unreasonable than the ones that early or even sometimes current versions of Windows NT make you go through. If Apple keeps developing this, and they *market* it, and they actually push this in those markets where this is actually something killer (all the ease of Windows NT without the bullshit, the constant reboots, the downtime, the requirements to buy like four redundant servers to make anything work, or the need foran MSCE)
And if this gets developed, it would be a very good thing for linux and UNIX in general, because anywhere that picks up this thing is going to be naturally gravitated toward J2EE and UNIX-based SQL software.. and after awhile, they'll begin to realize linux is a drop-in replacement in some places for this. Any mindshare that this Xserve thing picks up translates to instant mindshare for everything UNIX.. becuase that's just one more shop that has expertise in Apache, Perl, etc, instead of expertise in IIS, ASP, etc...
Please, please, apple, don't fuck this one up. If they play your cards right, they could take over the world with this one. This could be the first step to making Macs seem usable or credible in a university/business environment.. if they can get a serious foothold with this.. i don't even know.
This makes me incredibly, incredibly happy. It's very exciting. It's just too bad apple will probably not market it correctly and we'll wind up with something that just slips through the cracks and never catches on, another product that was technically neat but no one used. Now i just want to know how long it will take LinuxPPC to put together a bootable package for the XServe..
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Three words: Apple Remote Desktop
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
This announcement explains Pixar's move to OS X. How else could a render farm on OS X be space-effective?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Not as fast connection
Jeremy D. Zawodny /
There's a DB9 port on it. First for a Mac, AFAIK.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
or do I need a rack?
Its such a sweet looking box, not as artsy as some of the other Apple hardware (and as a TiBook, Sage iMac DV+, Cube, PowerMac 5500 and MacSE owner I am definitely not bashing!) I'd really like to have it on my desktop.
Just maybe purchase an Apple flat panel display. Maybe not. But I'd really like this thing on my desktop.
As someone who is not really familiar with rack mount hardware - can I get away without a rack?
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As a ballpark figure, 1 watt turned on all year costs you $1. Maybe double that if you are in a continuously air conditioned environment like a machine room.
The savings may not be too large. I checked an Athlon system with an ammeter recently. It came in at 120W with one drive in it while doing its server tasks. So, they at least are in the same ballpark. (The measurement techniques are surely different, I would not claim one was higher than the other based on this data. Just that they are near each other.)
Power is one of the reasons I suggest people not use that crappy old 486 or pentium as a NAT/firewall box in their house unless they are doing it for joy. In about a year or so of electricity savings you can pay for one of the new integrated appliances and enjoy increased reliablity and savings in the following years.
*sigh* You are talking about kernel preemption, or preempting the system task, not preemptive multitasking.
In many places in both the Linux (2.4/2.5) and Darwin kernel's (depending on the device drivers), both will fail to preempt themselves for a userland task. (Yes, Virginia, there are chunks of code even Darwin won't preempt) Likewise, in many places (even in extremely old versions of the linux kernel), preemption can happen. You would be correct to say that there is a focus in 2.5 for trying to eliminate or optimize a lot of the non-preemptable code and to say that Darwin experiences marginally lower average latency than Linux 2.4, but to use that as some way to measure system performance is as ridiculous as it is stupid.
Besides, if you want to get super technical, there are two robust and stable implementations of Posix realtime threads for linux (RTAI and RTLinux) that have existed for a number of years. Darwin has no such beast. Now we are talking latencies of 10-15 microseconds vs the low-millisecond ranges of either Darwin or Linux 2.4/2.5
And if you want to get even further into the technical mumbo-jumbo, the ARM processor can rock both the PPC and the X86 in terms of preemption. There are event's called FIQ's (Fast IRQ) on ARM that cause the processor itself to preempt ITSELF and execute some other code! You can call efficient FIQ code on the order of 10MHz and still run your normal stuff on top of the CPU -- and on Linux too -- on top of RTAI Posix RT threads -- or not!
Oh, and Intel makes the best ARM cores, too. Yeah and they have 32 bit registers just like your 64/128bit PPC's.
- Target Markets:
- Education -- We think there's a great opportunity for us here.
- Creative -- Apple continues to be the platform of choice.
- Biotech.
- Video.
These are Apple target markets and they already have a big foothold in there and these machines are sorely needed.Gigabit ether makes file sharing and collaborative work off a central server complete possibility. You care seamlessly share huge Photoshop files or video files from a central location and have everyone work on them.
Netboot your school lab from a central server or servers.
Serve WebObjects applications from a server for internal or external uses.
Painless, autoconfigured Apache serving.
All of these things are much harder or impossible on a Intel/Linux box.
They also announced Oracle 9i for OSX, Blast (clustered bioware, gene folding etc) for OSX as well as a bunch of other new products designed to take them into new markets.
Outside of the pure webserver market price matters less than good design and functionality... I think the Apple servers look good next to the Dell rackmount servers - why shouldn't Apple offer these products? Linux/Intel has some sort of birthright to a given market place?
And all that being said they will pick up some web/app/server market as well. Apache/WebObjects/Oracle etc... You probably can do it a little cheaper with a DIY Linux box but I bet there's people who would rather do it easier.
=tkk
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
I've got Unix servers serving up X displays to over a 100 users, with less power than this machines got.
True the full Mac GUI is more power hungry, but I would love to see one of these capable of serving up X style desktops to users.
You say you can get a server from Dell with RAID for less, and you run Win2000?
Hmmm. Since Win2000 will charge you $3295 for unlimited users, that means you must be able to get a Dell for $605? I looked on the Dell website and couldn't find a $605 server.
Oh, and the Xserve DOES have raid.
Seriously, you run Windows, you pay the user tax and you're concerned about cost- when your user tax is almost as much as the complete server from Apple?
This is a really competitive server from a hardware standpoint. When you include the software costs (and you did since you run Win2000) there is no comparison.
Your alternative is at least twice the cost (And when I go to the Dell website their servers are a lot more expensive than the Xserve for less CPU horsepower and multiple-rack units.)
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
On the other hand, having the operating system actually capable to deal with (and configure, the real biggie) RAID is very nice.
I hate that firmware level fussing you have to do with hardware RAID, and then the operating system is pretty clueless/helpless aboout dealing with any failures itself.
Technically, sure. At my last job, I had a rackmount IBM server sitting on a desk for almost a year. They're optimized for racks--but that certainly doesn't mean there would be some inherent problem in just leaving at your desk.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Except Slashdot is about Noise-to-Signal ratios...
The last batch of 6 1U x86 rackmount servers I bought from one of the largest PC manufacturers came with misprogrammed APICs that made them unable to run Linux without spending several days on hackery to get them going. The PCI slots are still useless, they can't deliver interrupts, but the rest of the machine works. I shuttled machines around so they don't need their PCI slots. (This machine was not purchased with Windows, it was a no-OS machine.) Two of these machines have failed in the 6 months that I have owned them.
The previous batch of 2U servers I purchased had a whiz-bang scsi controller that displayed a linux allergy and took me weeks of trying pre-release patches and waiting to get a linux version that worked acceptably. I still have to build custom kernels for these machines when I upgrade.
The biggest problem I have purchasing PC hardware is there is no good way to tell what is "server grade" and what has cheaped out components in the power supply or capacitors that will cause their MTBF to suffer. The extreme price pressure always tempts the manufacturers to cut corners.
So, the attactions...
Ok, they cost about 30% more than the servers I have been buying (and certainly outperforms them, but that is irrelevant, my servers are low cpu users). I'll take that. It vanishes in the unbilled hours dealing with mystery hardware and having to buy a bunch of spare machines to count on being able to replace a machine when needed.
Hmmm, when Alpha Processor Inc. (API Networks) introduced the 1U dual-833Mhz EV6x Alpha CS20 over a year ago, I saw no special Slashdot story.
Granted, it was an expensive server ($8000US+)but did run Linux and NetBSD admirably.
Compaq introduced a 1U AlphaServer DS10L over TWO years ago and no Slashdot story on this either.
Slashdotters would complain that the Alpha-based servers are far too expensive so let's look to the low-end.
Sun introduced its sub-$1000US 1U Sun Fire V100 and Netra X1 servers and yet I never did see a drooling Slashdot story on either of these.
Not to mention that third-party integrators have had 1U dual Intel/AMD rackmounts for over a year as well. Nope, no major Slashdot story on the introduction of these either...
Apple comes late into the game with a non-ECC "Server" (that more closely resembles a desktop G4 stuffed into a 1U enclosure) that runs an unproven OS X (yes, unproven compared to Tru64/Digital UNIX, Solaris and even Linux/Net/FreeBSD) and Slashdotters are ecstatic.
Boy, that Kool-Aid must have been awfully refreshing.
~PA
Apple releases a $4000 1U server and you say x86 hardware is cheaper and faster?
I'm perplexed that such mythology remains-- how can people continue to think this despite the fact that the powerPC has been beating the pentium in every reasonable performace comparison for years, and at half the cost.
The is almost a law of physics-- the PPC is a risc chip while the pentium is a risc chip with a 386 compatibility processor running emulation software. Therefore the die is a quarter the size -- which means it costs 1/8th as much and the speed is much much faster.
Hell, it even has a dedicated floating point vector unit, which the pentium doesnt (MMX was quite a failure.)
This means Apple gets faster processors for a lot less money, which allows them to release servers like this one with more performance for less money than you can get from any quality x86 manufacturer.
The Dell PowerEdge1650, the closest comperable machine from Dell, has fewer drive bays, half the drive capacity, NO-hot swappable drives, dual processors (which are SLOWER than the PowerPCs), dual gigabit ethernet, 512MB Ram, the remote management card (Which is free for apple, extra for dell), RedHat, and standard support is $6,341.00.
So, %50 more expensive with less capacity, and SLOWER PROCESSORS.
Every time apple releases new hardware, some x86 fan goes on and on about how expensive it is, and every time I make this comparison in response and find the same thing-- it costs a lot more and you get a lot less when you go Dell, Compaq, HP, etc.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
The drives are all masters. Xserve has 4 ATA/100 channels, 1 per bay.
Apple's L3 is very fast. It's 500MHz DDR SDRAM (Effictive speed of 1GHz), and there's 2Mb per processor, much better than only 512Kb close coupled Cache.
And your Athlons, nice warantee on them, I stick to systems that come with Service Contracts before I drop $$ on a server for colo or any serious work. Dell can play that game, so can HP, Sun and now Apple, but your Athlon's can't.
Clone boxes are great, until you play in the big leagues, and that's where Apple is palying here.
The Crazy Finn
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
Well, when I say me, I mean my group. We do computational chemistry (solid state). The more work we do, the more CPU we need. All the software we use runs on UNIX, (mostyl fortran). Scince OS X, we've had the option of looking at a Mac for purchasing CPU.
Our real problem is that the way the system of grants works, is that we can afford up to 3000 pounds (about 3800 USD), from a small grant. Otherwise, because of the accountability problem, we have to apply for a large grant specifically for a computer. This makes taking on small grants, and colaborations awkward.
All we want is CPU bang per buck. Fast networking for cluster building would be useful, but not needed, as we can spread the jobs over many indepentant machines.
I'll be watching these beasts. Could be just what I;ve been waiting for, if I can get a decent F90 compiler for them..
Later it listed two 64bit PCI slots so I assumed that the network card was in one. Now it lists three slots with one being dedicated to the second NIC. Ah well, having two free slots is much better.
Three Expansion Slots.
Two 64bit PCI slots; one open if you add a second Gigabit Ethernet port (on a PCI card).
One AGP 4x slot, comes populated with a Radeon 8500 video card.
http://www.apple.com/xserve/specs.html
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
Sorry to self-reply, but I should mention that my above post refers to a custom config; the standard is two 64-bit PCI slots, and one 32-bit PCI slot with an ATI vid card in it.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
Sure, it didn't add alot to the overall cost, but it seems like a waste of real estate. You get three firewire ports over 2 usb ports. Plus one of the firewire ports is in the front, where I think usb would make more sense.
I mean, this thing is probably going to be in a server room, so I can't really see it hooked up to an ipod or a camcorder, and firewire doesn't extend long enough to make it to someones office before you need a repeater.
The only real application I see is IP over firewire which isn't a bad idea at all. You get 4x performance over 100mb ethernet and the hubs are alot cheaper than gigabit so you it's a nice compromise.
Still, beyond IP, what would a practicle application be?
Actually the ATI vid card is in a 64bit slot, the GigE card is in the AGP/PCI combo slot.
If you spec the Radeon 8500 you lose the second GigE. BTO options for PCI cards are only a U160SCI Card or 1000baseFX(Fibre GigE) card in the top 64bit slot, the bottom 64bit slot is base video or empty and the 32bit slot is 1000baseTX copper GigE or Radeon 8500. Of course you can mix&match somewhat (The base video is a 64Bit card, so you can't put it in the 32bit slot)
The Crazy Finn
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
So why do people buy Sun and SGI servers? And so just because Apple doesn't have any previous standing, what prevents them from trying? IBM didn't have any previous standing in home computers when Apple was still making the original Apple, but that didn't stop them from trying. Why shouldn't apple try to expand their business?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Yep, and not so surprisingly for Apple a more minimalist taste. Now twelve years ago there were more reasons then just "extra features" to like the GNU stuff more. The GNU stuff had fewer compiled in limits and didn't blow up when it hit them, and by and large the BSD stuff tended to (the BSD stuff was also thought of as bloated and huge vs. the AT&T stuff, I mean cat had switches? What!). However things started to change with the release of fuzztools and the associated paper. I think the BSD tools suffer far far less from stupid compiled limits. They still have fewer features then the GNU versions though (for example no color support in BSD ls, which I'm sure seems as exciting to some people as BSD's adding of a / after directory names did to people use to the AT&T way...and to other people just as bloated!).
(yeah, I saw the smile, but...)
A couple of points:
You don't need Win2k AS unless you are doing clustering. Save well over $1600 off your price that way.
There's no need for the Dell Remote Assistant Card unless this server is in another state. Win2k can be administered remotely quite easily, th only time this card is needed is in the event of failures where you want to see the boot up sequence.
You may or may not need the added drive space, if this is a web server chances are not. Just because 60Gb is the smallest Apple offers, does not mean it's a valid comparison.
Gigabit ethernet may not be required if your data center is not equipped to support it.
I'm surprised you didn't try to include a Firewire card on the Dell, even though that may not be needed as well.
You also forgot the $950 charge for Apple Premium care. The XServer only comes with a 90 days of tech support and 1 year of hardware repairs. Furthermore Apple does not offer 24x7 hardware support, and only offers 4hour response time in certain markets.
I think the point is, this comparison is pretty bloody stupid. It all depends on what you are going to be using the machine for, and what risks your business is capable of accepting.
Oh I forgot to mention.
I can find no mention of RAID being offered on the XServe. It's a $499 add-on card for the Dell, plus another $350 minimum for a second drive to do RAID-1.
It's rare to see a server installed without RAID-1 at least. Unless you really don't mind losing data, and can afford to take the time to restore a machine from backups in the event of a failure. Even our clustered web servers have mirrored system drives... it's cheap insurance.
That I can see, I guess...
But you returned it (eating the 10% fee) before taking the 30 seconds it would have taken you to find out that the traditional *nix filesystem was an available option?
That's just stupid.
For the record, if you don't like HFS+, you can use UFS. Also if you don't like tcsh, you can install bash (free download from Stallman & co.). If you took a deep breath, calmed down, and did a quick visit to any of thousands of web sites that were chattering about this stuff at the time, you could have found all this out. For that matter, if you had bothered to look into it before buying a $1200 laptop, you would have known all this going in.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
let's mention the lack of Firewire, but no big deal there
HA! I knew you were going to bring this up.
A lot of us snickered when Apple pitched the G4 as a "supercomputer" (using the technical export definition), but if folks like Genentech build racks of these, clustered, and land in the top 10% of the Top500 list, Steve and company will be the ones laughing.
Let's see... the *bottom* of the Top500 list is currently a 116-CPU Cray T3E 1200, with a theoretical peak of about 139 GFlops... you'd only need enough Xserves to fill 1/4 of a rack to come up with that kind of power.
Okay, okay, I guess I want some too.
Have I installed secure Apache? No, it comes installed. have I set one up? Yes and takes 1 minute to configure a website and 3 minutes to configure a secure one. Right out of the box - that's why it's easier.
Have I installed Tomcat? No, it comes installed - well and older version does. Played with it - not interested. Will install newer version if/when I want to.
Postgres? No, but I played with pre-installed MySQL - 2 minutes to turn on and use. Upgraded to later version (to fix BLOB>255 bug) and continued to run it. That did take more than 5 minutes. Maybe 15? You can downlaod source and install or get binary images and install them if you want the latest version.
I can get an application server up and running for much less than a WebObjects/Oracle solution.
Yes you can. I NEVER said you couldn't. Not everyone is you. Some people want that solution and here's a product that supplies it.
On Mac but preferably on Linux/Intel for hardware cost reasons - hell I provide SCSI RAID
Again, not everyone is you. This is exactly my point: Apple offers a product. People seem offended by it's very existence. When was the last time you heard someone say, "Why does BMW even make or sell cars?" Because people buy them.
I can do cheaper/differently/blah blah blah And now that Apple offers this product you still can. Here's an idea: If you don't want it - don't buy it.
=tkk
PS XServe will do RAID - software RAID as is or add SCSI/RAID with a PCI card. From the Apple BTO store. Go check it out.
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
Just to repeat this in another thread so that it might sink into you head *LINUX HAS DONE PRE-EMPTIVE MULTITASKING SINCE IT WAS CREATED*. If you're going to spout off about OS design, at least know the terminology. In many cases, Linux doesn't have a preemtable kernel, but it's always had preemptive multitasking. 2.5 will add more points in the kernel where it can be preemted, but every kernel (including Darwin) has critical sections where nothing can preempt it. Now, go back to your OS design class and learn those definitions before you fail your test.
http://www.mackido.com/Hardware/G4.html http://www.apple.com/g4/
just my blog and pix
As you can see the AMD is a hottie and thus not necessarily the best choice for a rack. I will admit that the process technology to make the AMD Athlon Model 4 (not the XP) is a little dated and for that along with other factors contributes to the high power consumption.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
For the price, this is amazing. the box has two 64bit/66mhz slots in it, which could probably fit two dual channel scsi160 (or 320) controller cards in it.
7 A58-54C8-11D5-97C60090278D3ED0
It's a 1U case, if I was going to do massive storage intensive tasks on it, I would plug it into a hardware raid. Like the Lacie TX12000 system, http://www.lacie.com/products/product.cfm?id=4A86
Which is rackmountable, and handles all the aspects of the raid itself. That way, if the server breaks, I can remove it, put a new one in its place, and keep going. (Servers support netbooting now, so I wouldn't have to change configuration). For the education / science / lets get work done crowd, this is an awesome benefit.
Since storage capacity is essential, and you can raid the drives, why not put ATA in there? Instead of scsi. If you need scsi do the above, and put them in a box dedicated to handle them.
Oh, and the machines all have RS232 ports on em.
Firstly, hats off to Apple. It looks good (and that is a selling point, especially in design companies). It has enough power, the group of researchers (there was a story here on them wanting to use G4's but the tower couldn't be stacked) can now stack them. And above all (this is redundant, has been posted already) the admin software and unlimited seats licence will be selling points in those places (schools, design companies etc) where there is no one who has the technical capability to setup a linux box (and the Cobalts from Sun are not very good in terms of software admin and cost more with far less power) who probably thought that they were stuck with Windows servers.
Nice to see that Apple has finally introduced DDR. means that this will trickle down to the desktop sonner or later.
I dunno about the 3 PCI slots, but there have been dual Athlon 1U's with 4 drive bays for over a year now. Go to penguincomputing.com or appro.com if you don't believe me. And dual 1800+ Athlon's will give you much better CPU performance then any Apple chip for non-Altivec (and I would be many Altivec) tasks. The dual Athlons I've mentioned are all cheaper then Apple's setup ($3000 for 1 proc apple vs $2500 for dual athlon). And, I'm sorry, but point 4 is dumb. If you're buying the system, you know your app will run on it. Buy from appro or penguin and you're guaranteed that Linux will run on your hardware.
And finally, J2EE is the enterprise application server of choice. Webobjects is really nice, but J2EE is where it's at right now.
Oh, and rack mount systems live in racks in a server room. I don't care what they look like.
You can get your fill of blinkenlights on Mac OS X here. Probably need to run Remote Desktop or something for it to be useful with the RacMac, though. :-)
With Apple's recent knack for removing "legacy" ports on their machines, it's really, really nice to see that they thoughfully added a serial port on the Xserve for console access. My server farm is all Unix, and as such, I don't use a KVM, rather, I use a serial terminal server.The Xserve, with both serial and VGA would work great in any server farm environment. Kudos to Apple!
You are right that it would be kind of silly to run the actual GUI. However, the admin interface runs on your desktop OS X machine. Take a look.
You won't be able to see the spiffy management interface without quicktime, though.
---------
get your war on
If you're a heavy video editor and want access to a machine that's super fast and has proper cooling for lots of drives, this might be a really appealing workstation.
I'm thinking of this myself, but I'm planning to wait until the midyear introduction of new G4s. They'll probably put the best of what they've developed here into the new systems plus a faster processor.
Just because it's called a server doesn't mean you need to use it as one.
D
I'm serious - why would anyone buy this instead of cheaper x86-based racks servers? I don't understand...
Actually I think there are a couple of points which your own post illustrates:
There are proven server OS's for x86, i.e. Linux, FreeBSD, WindowsAS, BSDI,
Each of which requires a propeller head to set up and maintain. The mac server's selling point will be ease of use. SInce they are (initially) targetting the server needs of their own installed base (education, design, etc.) they are also selling familialarity. Powerful UNIX server, no UNIX guru - that should save you a little money right there.
Apple has no track record in this domain
Another way of saying this is that they are entering a whole new market (read: whole new revenue stream) with a minimal investment. A side benefit of moving to a UNIX underpining for their consumer desktop OS is that they essentially got a respectible server OS with all that top-notch UNIX server software for "free." Why not take advantage of that? Even if they only see very modest success breaking into this market, every sale will be one they didn't even have a chance at before & will increase their potential revenues in a way that selling upgrades to their existing user base doesn't.
I know this seems to contradict a portion of my first point (that they are targeting the server needs of their existing user base) But, those server needs would have been met by a Windows or UNIX server (imperfectly I might add - those damn "apple doubles" can be a pain) Now those needs will be better and more easily met by an OS X server, the shop or school is now "all mac" and Apple makes a sale it had no chance at before.
Firewire sounds like a good way to attach a CD-R or tape drive for backups.
On the Design Page:
"Fits in with what's out there:
"Xserve fits into all types of industry-standard racks, so you can use what you already have or buy new racks "off-the-rack" to meet your specific needs. There's no need for a special "Apple rack."
Xserve supports racks that meet the specifications of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)/Electronic Industries Association (EIA) standard ANSI/EIA-310-D, International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 297, and Deutsche Industrie Norm (DIN) 41494. You can install the server in any of several types of racks, including: open four-post rack (19 inches wide and 29 -- 36 inches deep), cabinet with four-post rack inside (19 inches wide and 29 -- 36 inches deep), and two-post telco rack (19 inches wide).
I think this new attitude -- along with the list of nice features -- will go over well here in higher ed. I'm considering getting one of these and putting it in our co-location center. I've used the Server Admin on my in-house G4 server, and it's great for remote admin, too. But all of the admin tools alone would sell me over a different brand. A Linux 1U would be cheaper initially, but it costs something in time to maintain, too. I don't have the time and resources to hire a sys admin. I've got to do that myself, and it's not a lot of fun. This would be perfect.
I believe there are 1394->SCSI adapters that are available for Macs. It was brought about for iMac buyers who were migrating up from older systems.
Granted, you won't have good performance, but they'll work... and with similar fail-safe (since firewire/1394 is hot pluggable, etc.)
- Sig
Got to build a bunch of new tools for ID management, software distribution, aggregated backup/storage management, automatic help tickets and so on. For a service provider, a new golly gee whiz server type is just another lump of hard work we have to retrofit into our infrastructure. I sure help the management tools work otherwise it's going to cost tons of money to do everything by hand.
Apple's list of venders promising support for the new server (without any actual product commitments) is at : http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2002/may/14quotes. html
Without a doubt, the BSD-base is the best thing this server has going for it. Without knowing more, I'd say that VNC is going to be a big deal for people wanting to use this thing without necessarily giving a Mac to their network admins. (Speaking of admins, has Apple figured out how to sell the major consulting companies on this thing?)
Well, we now have a new operational definition of stupid. And that would be: "Eating a $150 restocking fee rather than Reading the Fucking Manual."
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Also, the GVS9000 is 2U high, vs. 1U for the XServe.
Man, the crack in Cupertino must be good.
Eh, it's not that crack-addled. The 280R is the least expensive rackmount 2-CPU machine in Sun's product line, so it's a logical place to start the compairison.
The point here is that the xServe manages to hit about 50% feature parity with the 280R while staying at more or less exact price parity with the Netra T1 AC200, which is blows the doors off of in terms of features.
I manage datacenters full of Sun boxes (low and high end) for a living. Frankly, apple has a very compelling little box here, and if I were Sun I'd be taking this very seriously.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
The matching RAID unit was also announced today and will ship in Q4. It has fourteen hot-swappable drives in a 3u enclosure.
despite the fact that the powerPC has been beating the pentium in every reasonable performace comparison for years
That's not a "fact". That is what we in the business like to call a "marketing claim," or what normal human beings call a "bald-faced lie."
Outside of a small number of benchmarks that make extensive use of the G4's vector units, the Athlon XP and Pentium 4 are faster than the G4 at every equivilant system price point -- usually a lot faster. This is a cold, hard fact.
That's not to say that the xServe isn't a nice box. Hell, it's a great little server, and I can't wait to get my hands on one. But the reasons for that have everything to do with the OS, the case design and the management infrastructure, and nothing to do with CPU speed.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
I have a dual Athlon MP (1900+) next to me right now...it only has 5 fans (2 processors, P/S, rear case, and front case (front case fan blows over the HD too)) and isn't that noisy. (The air coming out of the power supply is fairly warm, but I've noticed the same with other dual-processor boxen.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Three Words: Apple Remote Desktop.
... then the iPod.
... then Final Cut Pro ... then FCP 3 which uses the G4 for real-time effects and transitions, etc.
Dontcha love how Apple just trickles this stuff out but when you put it all together, it's just unbelievable?
Think Firewire... then iTunes
Think G4
They are so sly.
That's the Super ATA Next-generation (SATAN) technology. It'll be making its, er, mark on computers worldwide soon.
Don't try telling that to these people...
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I think the firewire ports on the front are very suspect. Purely speculation, but perhaps there's R&D going on for some sort of iPod application? I really can't imagine what, as these puppies are networked to the kilt... probably developer incentive as Apple is a force behind the interface.
Trolls, it must be cool to be that bored.
But why would you want to? The only reason people use Mac OS X over a free UNIX is because OS X hides you from the command line, and all the other bits of unix. If you strip out all the bits Apple added you're left with - BSD! You'd have to be crazy to spend so much on something that can be got for free.
Oh also about the UFS thing - I know a friend of mine tried it, and OS X wasn't happy. He found it lost features for one thing, though I can't remember which ones.... anyway he quickly went back to HFS+
As James Gosling recently said: "OS X is like Linux, only with Q/A [Quality Assurance] and taste!".
Then James Gosling doesn't understand Linux. OS X is fundamentally not like Linux at all! Can I change OS X? No. Who is in control of OS X? That'd be Steve Jobs.
The thing that makes Linux better is the freedom, making comments like that simply reinforces this fact.
IMHO BSD shows more taste these days, at least considering things like restraint in the face of code/feature bloat... GLIBC is not my definition of taste! (Just *try* getting it to compile to less than 1MB, I dare you... Enjoy your 200KB statically-linked hello-world.c, and your 400KB static hello-world.cpp)
Another company that will use these heavily is Apple themselves:
... check them out and think about how many servers it takes to give every Mac user a free 20GB virtual disk and full-featured email and online apps such as HomePage
... the Xserve is ready to plug and play with all those fast clients that Apple has been shipping out for quite some time now. Why would you get a Dell/Microsoft server with 10/100 when you have lots of 10/100/1000 clients around? Why would you want Windows at all when it costs so much and is so unreliable?
... FireWire is THE multimedia networking protocol ... Apple is THE multimedia computer company. Macs route real-time audio and video streams and MIDI data through FireWire, so your server has to have it to do that stuff, especially this year as music and video moves over to Mac OS X. There will be a lot of Xserves and their matching RAID boxes in music studios next year.
they did the biggest Webcast ever (Steve Jobs keynote)
they did the biggest download ever (Star Wars trailers)
over 4000 schools do all of their administration on Apple's PowerSchool software, which is hosted on servers at Apple
Apple.com is in the top 5 or 10 most-visited computer Web sites
Apple Store Online is in the top 5 e-tailers
all the computers at each and every Apple retail store have their hard disks wiped and restored to default from a server at Apple every day
Apple has been using Mac OS X Server internally for years and years (it was released in early 1999), and they have a lot of UNIX tradition in there, so their internal network is probably aching for these boxes
Apple's iTools Web services are very popular
Every Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X installation includes Apple's Software Update, which checks for updates to included software and automatically downloads and installs patches and updates (after getting the user's permission, of course) to keep the clients current
That's a lot of serving, you know? They're going to be able to show this stuff off on their own projects, show what it costs them to serve the biggest Webcast with Xserve and QuickTime Streaming Server and no per-stream fees, or how they keep millions of Mac clients up-to-date, and it's going to be a very compelling solution for any company that also does anything like the above list of things that Apple does with servers.
There are going to be a lot of places where a rack of these will be in a small room somewhere and everybody uses PowerBooks to access the server over Wi-Fi or Gigabit Ethernet.
All Power Macs and PowerBooks have Gigabit Ethernet
Also keep in mind that all the new stuff announced for Mac OS X "Jaguar" this summer will apply to these Xserves. Apple's Rendevous is ZeroConf networking, for example. And I don't get why so many Slashdot posts seem to think that having FireWire on your 1u server is a bad idea
Last I saw, a license or 25 or 50 or 100 Linux users was free.... if you want to run Windows, there are far more serious problems than the price :-). Darwin may be a decent Unix implementation, but I don't see why this is such an amazing win compared to a 1U server. (Admittedly, I couldn't get Dell's web page to simply give me a list price without becoming a registered customer :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The type of memory socket doesn't have anything to do with whether or not a server vendor will want to have any thing to do with the Frankenstein that you've created once you call that vendor for tech support.
A 3K 1U server is rather pointless without a solid support contract.
If you are just going to "fly without a net" anyways, you might as well get a cheaper PC.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
makes a lot more sense now. I was a bit surprised that they were going to be doing their rendering on a huge field of desktops. I wonder if they had any inside info that the Xserver was coming soon ;)
The way you distinguish directories from files is that the directories look like folders and the files look like pieces of paper. That's been going on for 20 years now.
Highly available solutions can do just fine in a "buy the cheapest box" enviroment. I dispute this notion that this Apple server is some silver bullet for TCO. It might have major advantages against WinDOS. However, those advantages won't be quite so stark when compared to any Unix.
A $1000 Freenix might take more labor to set up initially, but should not incur any more "ongoing TCO" than an Apple server.
$2000 per machine is a lot of labor to burn through. This is especially true if you have multiple machines where the labor costs of the first server can be amortized across the rest of your machines.
You seem to be generalizing WinDOS results to all non-Apple operating systems.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I don't know who wouldn't be happy with these remote management/monitoring options:
Server Monitor for remote monitoring of key hardware subsystems: enclosure temperature, processor temperature, blower speed, hard drives (SMART data), Ethernet links, power supply and UPS systems, enclosure security
Server Admin (TCP/IP)
Remote Setup Assistant
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
Intermapper from Dartware
Secure Shell (SSH2) for secure remote login
Command-line tools for remote configuration and management, including installing software, running Software Update, and setting system and network preferences
Go out and get sailing!
Another key reason that HFS+ is the default system is that it has features that many Carbon applications depend on that no other filesystem offers. What has always made the Mac easier to use is that while the user tracks their files by filename, the system and apps track files by both filename and HFS+ inode number. What this means is that a user can go ahead and move or rename their files, and the system and applications can still find them. For example, you create a catalog of your MP3 collection in iTunes, then you browse through the raw files in Finder and notice the filename "Sweat Emotion.mp3" which should be "Sweet Emotion.mp3", so you change it. Next time you start iTunes and try to listen to that song, iTunes will still know which file you mean, even though the filename of that file has changed since last time iTunes saw it. On other systems, you'd click on Sweet Emotion and the app would say "Can't find '~/Music/Aerosmith/Greatest Hits/Sweat Emotion.mp3'." On the Mac, HFS+ has got a lot of things that contribute to things "just working" in a desktop environment with a wide range of users. Another example of this is that developer previews of Mac OS X originally had all the Mac OS 9 -related files in a separate folder called "/Mac OS 9/" ... you installed Mac OS X and your current Mac OS 9 system and applications were moved from "/" to "/Mac OS 9/" and still worked.
Also, HFS+ is fully Unicode, very modern, and you can fsck a 120GB disk in under 10 seconds. Can you have Japanese filenames in UFS? This stuff is important to Apple, because they have a big international market and lots of publishing people use different languages on one system. There is only one Mac OS X for the whole world, so it's got to be internationalized.
You obviosly haven't worked for the same "idiots" that I have... a building full of Sun E2xx and E4xx systems all with the freakin' expensive creator 3d gfx cards in them wired to a console switch. Every one of them running a full CDE setup (all 20million bugs and all.) People want the gui because they have been poisoned by the world of Microsoft where you have no choice but have a gfx card and manage it by standing directly in front of it. (That's begun to change over the years as more and more companies have made millions providing remote management products. Now M$ wants all that money.)
It's suprising the amount of money that's poured into development of gui management applications just so an admin can click two check boxes instead of firing up vi and changing two "no"s to "yes"s. One of the biggest interview questions for any unix admin is the familiarity with vi.
Actually, it has yet to be established that these systems would require any less tending than their pure Unix counterparts. Everyone is merely assuming that this is the case because we're talking about Apple.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The White House announced that it's taking another look at its Middle-East policies in response to the media having become unaccountably IRack-friendly...
Get off my launchpad!
This is an important point which often gets glossed over. OS X can take two drives and make them RAID 1 but it can't boot off it. That means even with this Xserve you can't have disk redundancy for your OS. OS's drive fails, server goes kerplunk.
This is what I want - I want my OS on a RAID 1 and my data on a separate RAID 1 or RAID 5. If any drive fails I want the system to keep going, keep providing access to the data and I want it to let me know a drive failed via blinkenlights and by email (my pager has email). If it doesn't have its own email alert, I want it to execute the program of my choice or log it to a file so I can use a script or cron+script to make my own email alert.
I want this in a system which costs around $5000, provides at least 8GB for the OS disk and 30GB for data. I don't need a 14 bay array which will probably cost $3000 before you even add any drives to it. I need to set up an OS X file server this summer. I don't need a blazing processor or even blazing disk performance. I need reliability, redundancy and monitorability (I think I made up that word).
I can get this for Windows 2000 Server from many sources (with hardware RAID and hotswap drives, something I don't really need).
It's the reduced CPU utilisation you get with SCSI and don't with IDE. They could plug in additional SCSI HBA's to boost the bus throughput. Not that an individual physical drive is going to push much more than 20Mb/second anyway.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Who cares what CPU is in it? It's running a very major variant of UNIX ... the kind of UNIX that's most common on desktop computers, in fact. Their are ports of thousands of UNIX apps, it has the fastest Java2 JVM out there, it runs Mac Carbon and Cocoa applications, and it comes with a bunch of rich, easy-to-use, GUI-based administration tools. It plays nice with UNIX, Mac, and even Windows systems, and this will get even better in the next version of Mac OS X that's coming this summer.
... developers have caught up to Altivec, you know? Also, PPC has some non-Altivec things that are good for graphics and media processing, such as when a server is streaming different movies or encoding live audio and serving it. When you watch one of Steve Jobs' Photoshop bake-offs, they run an idential script on two similar Photoshop workstations, one Apple, one Intel-based, and when you see the Mac pull ahead a long way for the first time is as soon as there is a big image being rotated ... the Mac will do it in 3 seconds and it will take the Intel box a minute, by which time the Mac is usually most of the way to finishing out the workday ... that CPU stuff counts on a media server, too ... it's the same kinds of computing.
In other words, you can run a lot of software on this puppy, and put it into a lot of different kinds of networks.
Anything written for PowerPC that requires heavy computation is already long-since using Altivec, by the way. It's not an occasional thing, and it provides real benefits, so it's not ignored like similar things that have been tried on Intel platforms. The first G4's came out in late 1999, and a good portion of the Mac application platform has moved from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X since then
You can't go measure the current draw of one machine, and then compare it to the spec sheet for another. The spec sheet is going to vastly inflate the power draw, so that people don't under-spec their power supply lines.
What does your athlon system claim on the box for power usage? 240W?
1) I suppose RC5-64 seeing as that is the one thing i seem to care about at the moment. DAMN, a keyrate of 20.7 M/Keys/sec is faaast. and 48x that in a rack, makes me wish i had much money to blow. DnetcDB
2) Thats a server, woah! They *look* good.Blue PCB inside, sweet metal stylings outside, i know that i should not look at these things and think it is good or anything like that, but i can not help myself.
3) Cooling: This is my only concern, they do not appear to have a decent air intake system at the front of the rack, to cool the internal componantry.Sure the G4 is relatively cool, but there are the HDDs and 48 of them in a stack would be a lot of heat.
4)Comparable to PC offerings. At lest our new racks we are purchasing in the next few weeks are only PIII 1.3G machines, the speed differences of these new apple servers are negligable. To what it used to be
I think that it will be most interesting to see how much penetration into the rack-space market share apple are able to achieve.
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
1GHz CPU, 4 60GB disks (as 2 RAID 1 drives), AppleCare for $3,889.00 (.edu price) Whoo-hoo!
The $3889.00 was for 3 disks, not 4.
> for $1000 less you can get a G4 tower.
... sort of like a case mod where the only component you have to enclose already has ears and a titanium faceplate. You do give up a lot over a regular desktop, though, with no ADC, SuperDrive, Pro Mouse, Pro Keyboard included.
But then you have to pay about $300 to rack it, and it will take up 6u of space. In audio and video it's common to have racks of gear around, and 1u computers with G4 performance and Apple reliability and support is excellent.
If you look at the very small sizes of the iBook, PowerBook, and new iMac compared to the Power Mac G4, then you get the idea that the next step from the Power Mac enclosure is to 1u or 2u racks. You could wrap an Xserve in a 1u rack enclosure made from translucent plastic with a stand on it and call that the new Power Mac, and if you order 50 you don't bother with the outside plastics and just rack them as usual.
Actually, I can see it being fashionable to get an Xserve as a desktop and put it into its own dedicated rack
I noticed that the license is for unlimited users, wouldn't this be a major cost saving compared to a WinXP license which always counts the number of users?
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
Dontcha love how Apple just trickles this stuff out but when you put it all together, it's just unbelievable?
THIS is what the mac platform is all about. "Apple makes the whole widget," indeed. What Apple has done with Mac OS X and its other apps is build a software environment that is streamlined and effective because it is running on a guaranteed hardware configuration that is known to the developers. It's almost like coding for an appliance... you KNOW exactly what hardware this system will run on, you KNOW what that hardware is capable of, and you know exactly how to interface to it for maximum potential. This leads to a system that's reliable and almost immune to hardware problems or wildly divergent performance.
Apple does not need to maintain different kernels because some motherboards run interrupts in different ways. Apple does not need to have nearly 20 years of backwards hardware compatibility. Apple does not need to stake their reputation on bargain basement Taiwanese programmers writing drivers for the hardware their code will run on. Most importantly, Apple does not need to build an illegal monopoly to build an computing environment that works.
Try being productive under Windows running in Safe Mode. Now try using Mac OS with extensions disabled. Tell me Windows, at its bare core, is better than Mac OS. I dare you.
-Lx?
They haven't with any of my Macs (all of which have 3rd party RAM). They didn't even ask. And yes, some of the problems have been real hardware problems (like the sound not waking up after sleep...sometimes).
Heck, they even tried real hard to be helpful about a problem that could really have been Canon's fault (reading images over the USB from my camera was very flaky). Eventually I gave up and decided the PCMCIA slot was the "one true way".
Apart from quick and easy access to any specific machine in the rack, I think the main reason that Apple included the Firewire on the front panel is for Dgital Video. Sine DV is one of Apple's main markets and Video Processing houses generally need huge amounts of storage, this would be tailor made for them. In the Video center the rack will probably be not in some remote data center but in the room next door. You walk in with your Camera, ask the Admin which box has space on it for your prOn, plug the Camera or whatever in and copy the stuff across. The admin could obviously also make a Firewire hub out of the server room for easy access.
If Apple wants people to refer to the OS as "10", then surely they're doing themselves as disservice by naming their server "ex".
Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Since you do computational chemistry using grant money, I'm guessing you're at a university. Apple *is* trying to sell processors to that market, but they might also be talked into donating some, especially if you can make your chemistry code open-source so their paying customers can use it and buy more computers. It's probably at least as easy to beg one from Apple as it is to do your large-grant paperwork to get the cash to buy one.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Case independence is a UI issue that has leaked into low-level implementations and is an endless source of bugs and security errors. The id of a file should be a single unique sequence of bytes, and it would help considerably if programs could assumme that unequal sequences meant different files always.
> first Airports [were unreliable]
I have to mention that even though a high number of the first generation of AirPort Base Stations failed after 13-15 months of use due to a bad capacitor in some component, even thought they were then out of warranty, Apple replaced them with no questions asked. I got a new one the next day after I called about mine dying after 14 months. We were literally only on wired connection for less than 24 hours.
Also, I used to have a PowerBook 190, whose case had a tendency to crack at the hinge, and Apple extended the warranty on those to 7 years. I got mine fixed after five years for free and it was as good as new. The 5300 is the other "crappy" PowerBook model, and it also got a 7 year warranty extension. Every year or so Apple also offers 190 and 5300 owners $500 off a new PowerBook if they trade in their old one.
My point is that Apple's reputation for reliability is not necessarily tarnished by certain failing models if they did something about it afterwards to make it right.
In contrast, Apple's dual CPU systems have one fan. No chassis fan, no CPU fans, only a power supply fan.
As soon as you start interpreting the bytes you have broken any ability to do higher-level things with them.
This is why programmers want case-sensitivity in the file system, not because of some need to name two files "foO" and "FoO".
Interactive QuickTime movies are pretty old-hat. Like, 8 years ago.
This announcement now makes so much more sense!
This is not the sig you are looking for...
All FireWire Macs have target mode except the Power Mac G3. I'm sure the Xserve is no exception.
... in fact, that's the least of it. DV travels over FireWire, and pro audio and MIDI streams are starting to now. These servers won't just be for the Web and workgroups, but also a big part of Apple's new MPEG-4 solution. They know multimedia.
FireWire is not just for hard drives
What, am I the only one who wants to have a rack of these and a kvm switch built into his desk?
No.
PS, moderators? Why on Earth is this Score: 5 Funny? There is absolutely nothing funny about this! This is Score: 5 Insightful damnit!!!!
Hell, so they're 1U rack mount units. I think Apple is about to find out that a lot of people want these for their desktop just for the DDR RAM and 4 ATA controllers.
These would be awesome for multimedia work. I want 2x Dual units maxed out in DDR RAM with striped HDD's for both me and my girl's computer room and I'd also like a single CPU unit for our firewall/router running OpenBSD. Another dual unit running FreeBSD 5.0 for the mail/web proxy/file/print server....
Oh man.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
has to do with the support. $950 for a server is a lot as far as I'm concerned. That's half the cost of a basic server (or there abouts, maybe not an Apple). They should offer a basic extended HW warranty. Then offer a support plan. If they really want to get into the professional server business, they need to expand their options a bit I think. Our Enterasys networking HW options are numerous. There are probably 30 options to choose from. That said, I like the box. Nice looks. Good specs. I'd buy one. I wish they'd make a really cheap one though.
I'd love to see a... oh, never mind.
I applaud Apple for doing this, finally, though. I think they'll get quite a bit of mileage out of it, though it would be nice to bring back the big box server designs of the old Network Servers as well.
/brian
Looking at the specs, most screw-driver shops could put together something better for $1500 or so (thousands less than the Apple tax)
All true, but you're missing the point. This one runs Mac OS X (easy to use) and intergrates with Macs better than Linux, Solaris, Windows, etc. It's ideal for design firms, education, science, etc. These people using Macs on the desktop want to use them in the server room. They're not looking for the cheapest solution, they're looking for the solution with the least fuss. Another example: this is could be the best solution for server-based video editing setups.
The prices are basically the same range as their high-end desktop machines.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
With 2 GB of RAM, it really depends of the application : for a typical Web site everything fits into memory : the Apache processes, the web pages (they are small enough to fit in the memory cache) and even the database (lets face it, not every site has TB of data in its database). In these situations the hardrive is hardly ever used...
Apple didn't release a rack mount system years ago
I don't think this would have been too practical without Mac OS X in its current form.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
The Key is being pro Mp3 without supporting illegal activities : )
the guys that sign the checks are more comfortable buying products from microsoft or apple than using free products developed by a bunch of hackers on the net. of course that is exactly what darwin is, but they don't know that. they see a major corporation selling these machines with osx.
Sure, eventually apple extended the Airport warranty, but when mine failed they hadn't. Their helpful phone guy made a veiled suggestion that I should call back and lie about when I bought it to get it replaced. (I soldered in some new capacitors and now run it with an open case.)
I have a PB5300 too. The case split at the back and Apple fixed it at no charge 3 years out of warranty. They kept offering me $500 to trade it in, but I always liked it too much to give it back. It was a nice machine. There is something to be said for a 640x480 active matrix screen. That was gorgeous. I know one person that traded a more modern 800x600 machine for the PB5300 because he liked the screen so much.
They do an great job of standing behind the occasional lemon, but that isn't going to make me feel much better if I have servers failing on a regular basis. What makes me feel good about the servers is how rare the lemons have been.
Actually, it has yet to be established that these systems would require any less tending than their pure Unix counterparts. Everyone is merely assuming that this is the case because we're talking about Apple.
As you point out Apple's reputation for ease-of-use alone would make that a selling point even if it wasn't true in this case. Fortunately Mac OS X server is very "user friendly" even a school administrator or graphic designer with no UNIX expertise could set up and administer this machine. That is not to say that there aren't other easy-to-use servers, I'm sure there are (though I bet they don't support Macintosh clients as well). Apple has done a good job, I doubt they will take the server market by storm - but they will do a decent business selling to their target market and picking up a some extra sales and revenue from a market that was formerly completely closed to them.
If you notice, one of the BTO options is A SCSI CARD!
So, you only configure it with one ATA drive (for the system), you add the SCSI card option then buy a SCSI drive rack and hook them up... RIGHT?
Or (this is not for the faint of heart) - *hack* the drive bays to support a SCSI configuration...
Disclaimer: This comment was generated by a Flock of Trained Microsoft Programmers for Aqua_Geek.
I usually don't respond to ACs, but...
These are rackmount servers from one of the most reputable x86 vendors. These are not mystery boxes. The parts list would suggest that they run fine under linux, and I'm sure there are machines with those parts that do. Even the whizzy-scsi controller was listed as supported under linux.
A few years ago it was easier because the vendor would sell them in linux configurations, but that was stopped.
Your second paragraph is purely your unsupported (and contradicted in my first post) conjecture repackaged as facts about me.
What I'd really like to know is, How do you tell which PC hardware is crap? I was using the "buy server grade gear from reputable PC manufacturer" as my guideline and that has failed me miserably. I previously tried the "buy a couple different things, pick the best one then keep buying those" but the models change too fast for that to be practical.
And yes, Linux software management does suck (at present) but that is now: it won't be that way for long.
MySQL = Bugs and non SQL compatibility
While some people might take issue with Postgres being equal to Oracle *cough* I wasn't equating MySQL to Postgres. You asked me about my specific experience and I answered.
OSX also comes with OpenBase installed and running out of the box. I have also installed and programmed with FrontBase.
It isn't easier to install free/opensource software on a Mac than on a Linux server. apt or rpm package managers are just as efficient as a disk image. And there are great administration tools - my Max OS X box runs Webmin for administring Apache etc.
You're making my point for me. I said OSX was easier - and it is. AT WORST it's just like a FreeBSD machine - but then there are some wonderful admin tools as well - especially the example you immediately dropped - SSL. It takes about 2 tab selects and a couple check boxes, enter the webserver name and paste your certs into the happy GUI interface boxes where it tells you to and click the restart webserver button - which of course it reminds you to do. And you have SSL - I've installed/configed httpsd on Linux and FreeBSD and promise you it will save you at least an hour - probably two.
And you said you wanted the "How-to" guide. It's in the "AdminGuide.pdf" file that's installed in the dock for you automatically. (Pages 142-146 with dialogue box illustrations and everything.)
These are great admin tools - I have a Tomcat start/stop config panel that will detect and control it perfectly - same with MySQL and Openbase if I want to. And there are more coming out all the time. I'd be surprised if within a year all major programs didn't have Apple or third party interfaces. (And I've used WebMin on my FreeBSD server... it's better than CLI - but not much. I use ssh as much as WebMin.)
Yes, Apple stuff is more expensive, but no one will answer my basic question, "Why does that piss you off?"
Isn't that point of a free marketplace? Let companies offer products at the price they want and see how it goes?
"What does a BMW do that my Ford or Chevy won't? Why does BMW even make cars? They're not cost effective - that pisses me off!"
Whatever-
=tkk
PS And for bonus points explain to how setting up a streaming audio/video server is faster and easier on either of those other platforms.
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
Apple is aiming at the "boutique" server market (well, probably not much of a "market" at these prices).
I said a similar thing about the first iMac. "What is the point of building a computer for techno-phobes if it costs more than a techno-phobe is willing to spend?" I was wrong. Don't underestimate Apple's market analysis. I think they've learned their lessons since the days of the Newton.
Network Security: It always comes down to a big guy with a gun.
It's not quite as bad as you make it out. Each ATA drive has its own controller which will perk up the speed nicely thank you very much.
The Dell 1650 has room for 3 drives max, with a max size of 73Gb each. If you're in a linux shop, it'll be a bit less expensive but if you add cost of Microsoft's OS + equivalent server apps the Dell is many thousands of dollars over the Apple price.
Apple's offering unlimited client licenses on this baby with an interface that will make it easy to integrate into a windows shop. You can have 0.48T on this baby and it can sport two Gigabyte ethernet links. If you're just serving 1000 users email (not a problem for a unit of this capability) you are saving many thousands of $US in CAL costs.
Well, I guess you could run Yellow Dog Linux if you wanted to...
But why?
I agree... I think most people don't see case-independence as a UI issue because they're used to English, where the mapping from uppercase to lowercase is trivial. (b = a + ('a' - 'A') or whatever)... But other langauges have much more complicated sets of characters that should be equivalent for "filename search" purposes - Consider Japanese, where you've got a much larger mapping (Katakana <-> Hiragana), or Chinese, where thousands of characters have both Traditional and Simplified forms (distinct Unicode codepoints), and there is no order whatsoever to the mapping. I doubt any sane OS developer would even consider embedding the huge Traditional/Simplified character mapping table in the kernel.
As a ballpark figure, 1 watt turned on all year costs you $1. Maybe double that if you are in a continuously air conditioned environment like a machine room.
The problem isn't with the power per machine per year, but the power density (watts per volume). Above a certain number of kW per rack (5? 6?) the cost of cooling increases non-linearly because of the need for specialized AC equipment, plumbing, building reinforcement for heavy stuff on the roof, etc.
Go look at one if you're thinking about a new Unix desktop in the near future. It's really nice hardware.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
I already posted on what the target market would be that Apple is aiming at, but I thought it over a bit and came to the conclusion that the target market is larger than that:
1.Video Production houses: A lot of those houses already use Macs (Final Cut, After Effects, Maya etc) and already have Mac OSX expertise. This machine with it's Firewire port on the front of the machine is made for them: Most Video Production houses have racks of VCR's and effects gear in the studios and with this machine they could patch the gear to the server without having to crawl around the back of the rack. In addition to this this machine can do the file and web serving for these companies and thereby remove the need for them to have seperate platforms for this.
2.Audio Studios. The same as Video houses.
3.Schools. The server managment software makes it very interesting due to it's simplicity. While I doubt that cash strapped schools already using PC's will switch, those schools who can afford iMacs and iBooks will almost surely be using these on the server side, as well as the Apple remote desktop to control the classroom.
4.Any enterprise that needs one platform for web and file serving. This is the riskiest bet, but there is some merit in it. Since Apple makes a point of saying how well it works with both Unix and MS servers, there could well be effective reasons for enterprises to go with some of these. While they have qualified server technicians and admins, the managment software's ease of use, combined with the Unix underpinnings make it definitely a good idea to make those areas more efficient, especially since it can double as an MS file server at the same time except for Exchange.
I really do wonder if MS will start to do haul out the dirty tricks dept. with Apple since this is competeing head on with them? For instance changing the CIFS standard in future XP versions to make them incompatible with this server and refusing to licence the standard to Apple, or withholding updates to Office on OSX.