Slashdot Mirror
Xserve Outside the Reality Distortion Field
Gentoo69 writes "OSNews has a comparison of the Xserve with other 1U servers. How does the Apple offering stands up against the competition?" (Hint: pretty well.)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Read the article for some great detailed information, but don't bother trying to skip to the bottom to see the conclusions. There really aren't any. The Xserve is more expensive than some servers, and less than others. If you want to compare Xserve with Mac OS X Server to an Intel-based box with Windows 2000 Server, Xserve is a lot cheaper. If you compare it to a box with Linux, Xserve is about the same or a little bit more. Strangely, if you compare it to a Sun, Xserve is a lot more expensive. Which seems wrong, somehow....
*nod?*
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
Lowering the price to a "affordable" status for the Xserve might be a good idea for Apple to stay in the competition.
...do you really want a 1U rack that advertises color depth and framerate benchmarks instead of requests per second?
...do you want to run a server that can be DOS'd by crashing OpenGL?
And most importantly...
...do you trust your lonely sysadmin alone with a "lickable" server?
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
The big benefit doesn't come from the hardware. The benefit comes from the fact that it's as easy as or easier to administer than a Windows server, and it comes with an unlimited user license. The bulk of the cost of most Windows-based servers is the licensing.
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
That's right, 2 18-gig scsi 10k rpm hard drives and 1 gig ram. I can add a second P3 1.13 for $190 at any time. Here's a quote from IBM:
Config from Apple's store:
While the G4 is an impressive chip, its forte is really in the area of stuff like video encoding. Maybe SSL performance would be better as well. But I don't really see any reason to buy a $3600 Mac to use as a webserver when for the same price I could practically get two Gateways of similar performance. I'm having a hard time determining what Apple's intended market is for these things. Surely it's not meant to be used as a webserver, because it's WAY overpriced for that market. Its out-of-box features are similar to those of the Cobalt Qube, which, out of box, supports A million things which I listed and the lameness filter wouldn't let me include and whose entry-level price is $1149. Once again, I have to wonder what apple is thinking, and I truly hope this is intended solely for rendering farms.
Now I'm going to add a ton of stupid shit because of the fuckin lameness filter. Nice, right? # Please try to keep posts on topic. # Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads. # Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your
threshold on the User Preferences Page) Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is aboNow I'm going to add a ton of stupid shit because of the fuckin lameness filter. Nice, right? # Please try to keep posts on topic. # Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads. # Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your
threshold on the User Preferences Page) Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensiveyour own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive.threshold on the User Preferences Page) Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensiveyour own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive.
threshold on the User Preferences Page) Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that deslaaaaaame laaaaaaaame laaaaaaaame cribes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensiveyour own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive.
threshold on the User Preferences Page) Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensiveyour own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive.
The lameness filter causes more lameness than it prevents!
The lameness filter causes more lameness than it prevents!
avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, The lameness filter causes more lameness than it prevents!
avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate,
rooooar
I, for one, am pleasantly surprised to see that the XServe seems to provide pretty good bang for the $.
However, I would be interested to see how the ATA disk(s) hold up under heavy user load.
The problem with comparing OS X with an intel server running windows is that companies buying windows servers are most likely tied to MS for some reason (.NET). I don't see the Xserve competing with a wintel box at all. However, I do see it competing with x86 servers running linux or a BSD variant, since OS X is a BSD variant in itself, porting apps to run on it should be trivial if not already done.
I work in a big windows shop, but we do have a lot of *BSD and linux stuff, and I have already looked into getting some Xserve's for future Unix needs. I have one OS X box now that I use for various things, and it's smokin' fast (only a G3 400). The pricing on the Xserve is maybe a bit better than Dell pricing, and I can get more drive space, perfect for a syslog server or an intrusion detection database.
The article really doesn't draw any conclusions but rather makes some obvious assumptions. I'd like to see some hard benchmarks to see how it compares against a Dell 1650.
One thing I did notice from the article is that the IBM servers have built-in 512MB ram. Why would they build it in? In a large server farm, the one thing that fails most often is memory. If this is built in, it's going to present a big pain in the ass to replace.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
- $3300 for a second P3-S 1.4Ghz processor
- +$7833 to upgrade from 256MB of RAM to 2GB of RAM (obviously inflated)
- +$2500 for a 73GB hard drive
I have ordered a quad P3 Xeon (700Mhz with 1MB cache), 1GB of RAM, 4x 36GB 10K SCSI hard drives, Compaq 4x00 RAID controller for just over $20k and that was over a year ago. The only pieces that we purchased that were not Compaq branded were the memory modules (go Crucial!). Sure... there is a difference between a 7U server and a 1U server, but smart shoppers will not get dry humped by purchasing Compaq servers and options directly from Compaq.So when apple comes out with it's RAID system will it be XRAID? (as in "ex-rayed")
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
I saw this review a couple of days ago but didn't look to carefully at it since there weren't any benchmarks (from either Apple or reviewers). During the Xserve introduction Steve Jobs said benchmarks would be available in a couple weeks, so now that has been a couple of weeks maybe we'll see something soon.
(I'm speaking here as a SysAdmin, primarily of FreeBSD and Sun boxes, who uses OS X on a TiBook for most things. This is why I wouldn't buy an Xserve for general purpose use.)
No ECC RAM. This is one of the biggest omissions IMHO. As far as I'm concerned, without ECC it's not even in the running.
Only 2GB of RAM. 2G isn't much, these days, particularly if they want to be moving into the Oracle market. I would have expected 4G minimum.
No SCSI option. I'm far from a SCSI bigot, but at the end of the day if boatloads of disk I/O and random-access disk patterns are what you have, SCSI is faster. If all the local disks are going to be used for is booting the machine or perhaps some low-end fileserving, then ATA disks are fine - but it would have been nice to see an option on the high-end machine to swap the ATA drives for SCSI drives. I consider this particularly relevant to Apple's apparently upcoming foray into Oracle territory. I do applaude Apple for making an ATA-based machine that isn't bottom-of-the-barrel everywhere else though (unlike Dell with their PE 350).
No hardware RAID. Again, I consider this a rather large omission as it *seriously* limits the amount of "useful" disk space available. AFAIK OS X doesn't do software RAID5, so you're limited to either a RAID1+0 (with some space subtracted from each drive for the system, since OS X won't be able to boot from a RAID0 - or a RAID5 for that matter, should it be added to Jaguar) or an optimised-for-failure RAID0 (again, losing some space to the system). Even one of those halfway-hardware-RAID chips put on many PC motherboards would have been sufficient, as it at least manages to make all the devices appear as a single drive to the OS, but ideally they would have used one of the existing "real" IDE RAID cards like 3ware make. From where I'm standing, these things top out at around 200 - 220GB of usable space. Other people may be prepared to risk the fourfold increase in risk by using RAID0 over all the drives, but I wouldn't be.
Apart from those things, I think the Xserve is an ok deal, depending on your needs. The places I expect to see them popping up are:
* Data-processing clusters, in which case my RAID requirements above are largely moot (the ECC comment is still very relevant though). They'll be a good deal for this, assuming the required processing benefits greatly from Altivec. If not, a bunch of PowerEdge 1650s are a better deal.
* Low-end fileserving. Eg, to the small group of Mac users we have here, or for a small company. In this case the large amount of storage for the relatively low price is pretty good - although my above comments about the RAID aspect should be taken into account. Additionally, the (undoubtedly simple and excellent) management tools will be a real winner here.
For general purpose use though (eg file & print serving to a range of different machines) I'll stick with my PowerEdge 1650s running FreeBSD. On that note, I'll just point out a few things about the 1650s (my personal favourite 1U machine) that I see a lot of people making these comparisons neglecting:
Price. They start cheaper and mostly stay cheaper.
Processing power. For some things, the 1Ghz G4 is going to be faster. For most things, the 1.4Ghz P3 is going to be faster. For the most things, however, CPU power is largely irrelevant as the tasks are IO bound - in which case the SCSI on the 1650 gives it the edge.
Dual power supplies. Not essential, but nice to have.
Up to 4G RAM and ECC. It might be slower PC133, but even that is going to be faster than swapping. Plus it has ECC - essential for any non-toy server IMHO.
Hardware RAID. Very important - bumps the "usable" amount of disk space up to about 200G (3x73G drives) which puts it in the same ballpark as the Xserve in terms of "usable" storage. Given the 128MB of cache included, also nullifies most of the overhead of RAID5.
Free slots. Even with hardware RAID and dual GB ethernet, the 1650 still has two 64 bit/66Mhz slots free. I'm not quite sure what Apple are thinking with their combo AGP/PCI slot...
Support. The standard support with the 1650 is four hour onsite support. To get that level with the Xserve costs an extra US$950. I'm not sure what Apple's "standard" support is (anyone ?), but bringing the 1650 back to "3 years next business day" knocks nearly US$1800 off the price. Apple are rather coy about exactly what support is included with the Xserve by default - I'd like to see a definite answer as to what you get with just the machine.
I banged together a 1650 that I consider equivalent to Apple's high-end offerings to compare prices:
1650 w/dual 1.4GHz P3, 2GB RAM, 3x73GB 10kRPM drives, RAID controller, 3yrs SILVER support (4hours onsite) : US$7873
Xserve w/dual 1Ghz G4s, 2GB RAM, 4x120GB drives, Applecare premium: US$7799
1650 advantages: much more expandability, much faster drive subsystem, ECC RAM.
Xserve advantages: faster processors if you use something benefiting from Altivec, potentially easier administration.
Personally, I think the 1650 is a better machine for most tasks. But Apple has done fairly well with the Xserve as a first go. I look forward to the second generation which will hopefully address my concerns above.
I think I was bamboozled and run amuck. That was by far one of the stupidest articles I have ever read comparing any technologica ldevice to any other technological device. Even from a platform advocacy standpoint it was pretty fucking stupid. The author looked up prices on the vendors websites and made some dumbfuck guesses about the performance of the systems. BSD is dying trolls can fucking do that. Some points I found especially stupid:
- Rehashing the SCSI/ATA debate. Unless you're going to do a really in depth benchmark of SCSI and ATA drives it is fucking pointless to bring the subject up. Depending on the operating systems, host controller drivers, file system, main memory, DMA constroller, south bridge quality, time of day, and phase of the moon performance between SCSI and ATA drives varies widely. A 7200RPM ATA drive on a badass ATA controller can have better througput than a badass SCSI drive of the same speed. The ATA host controllers give ATA drives capabilities similar to that of SCSI drives if not superior ones at a lower cost per megabyte. A SCSI drive is just a dumb disk with a smart controller.
- Not including the price of software. Unless you're going to be sticking a Free as in beer or speech OS onto one of your x86 systems that don't have the OS pre-loaded you need to include that price. For Windows you're either buying a limited client license or an unlimited client license, that would set even the cheapest of those servers up a couple hundred dollars. The Xserve and Netra come with unlimited user license for the OS (AFAIK with the Netra) with the Xserve using Apache and the Netra having a single processor license for the Sun ONE webserver (iPlanet).
- Saying the G4 is better for multimedia. Fuck, by the multimedia definition used for the G4 you can say the Athlon is geared mainly as a multimedia processor because it has a strong FPU performance. What the fuck is wit hthat backwards logic. Serving up static web pages isn't very processor intensive, often times the overhead for the transaction is beefier than the transaction itself. The efficiency of the web server and if used the dynamic page generation code greatly affects performance. The processor can't be blamed when the OS can't handle the increasing transactions. Case in point were the Netcraft benchmarks showing that that particular kernel version couldn't build and tear down processes fast enough to keep up with IIS' worker thread model. The processor didn't have anything to do with that problem.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Doesn't a G4 consume less power than a Pentium/Athlon? The picture here shows that it does have fans, but I would assume that maybe that don't have to work as hard as those on an X86 system? So would the running costs be less for the Xserve?
One important consideration when you're considering a system with 2 GB ethernet ports on it is how much load this puts on the CPU. For Sun's UltraSparcII based servers, they recommended you budget one CPU for each GB Ethernet adapter in the machine. The reason: all the CPU activity in the TCP/IP stack for that volume of traffic was considerable. Keep in mind, while Sun was suggesting it, their kernel IO was quite good (I don't know how OS X stacks up in this category) and their GB Ethernet adapters were among the best in the industry for low CPU load. So, 2 GB adapters on a low end server is fancy and cool, but don't expect to actually be pushing that many bits through. There is a reason Gigabit Ethernet has won the nickname "200MB Ethernet."
Hate to say it, but this site reeks of blind Mac devotion. I'm not trolling. I'm a Mac user too, but even so, I really hate Mac advocacy sites and would hope that the moderators here on the Slashdot Apple site are savvy enough to weed these out. I could be wrong about this site, but that's my gut instinct after browsing it a little.
--Rick
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Top ten criticisms about the XServe (if I can come up with ten).
1. It doesn't use SCSI!!!
Weren't you the guy I was arguing with in 1995 about how superior SCSI was to IDE, yet you were whining about how expensive SCSI was and how Macs always cost more because of it?
More specifically: Apple announced a FCAL based drive array at the same time. FCAL is MUCH faster than SCSI. Clearly Apple is offering a competitive solution if you need a serious server, and given the prices NetAppliance and EMC charge, I bet they will be extremely price competitive on this front. (As usual)
2. The G4 os SO SLOW!
This is true for people who believe that integer performance is all that matters... but even then, if you do a fair comparison, the G4 gets 2-3 times as much done in a clock cycle. But the reality, these days, is that modern operating systems make extensive use of floating point math, and in this the G4 excels. Hell, the entire UI for Apple will be a 3D rendered surface come the next release, and what isn't off-loaded to the graphics card will be well handled by the G4. The place that integer performance matters a lot is in un-optimized poorly written windowing systems, like Windows and Linux. Those crowds have gone down the path of making poor use of the processor and just buying ever increasing MHz. This puts you further and further behind- as the PowerPC benefits from the same advancements in MHz, the Apple solution gets faster at a much faster rate.
3. I can build a better linux server for half the price!
Ok, but it won't be in 1U will it? 1U is an expensive case to buy (with built in sliding rails , remember.) 3U cases were $700 last I looked. Will it have four IDE controllers? Dual Gigabit Ethernet? Dual processors? 2G of RAM? Seems slashdotters often like to compare high end apple hardware to an off the compUSA shelf desktop PC and claim Apple's overpriced. (That is if they actually do a comparison, usually its just an unsupported claim.)
4. Linux is FREE so there's no value in OS X! comaprisons to windows are Silly, NOBODY uses windows!
Right. Actually, Linux is not free in any real sense. Windows has a high cost when you install it, and then ongoing costs every year. Linux has an equivilent cost when you install it and ongoing costs every year. The difference is with linux you pay the cost in labor. If your labor is worth minimum wage, then Linux is a great deal. If it isn't, the increased cost in installation and ongoing maintenance of the software is pretty high. (Though Windows has lower maintenance labor it does have license costs, so Linux is cheaper ongoing.)
OS X on the other hand is no cost to install (if you took off the full retail price of OS X Server the Apple hardware would be a LOT cheaper in the comparison of prices!) and has a lot lower labor cost to maintain the server. GUI server maintenance is worth the cost-- if you value your time above minimum wage.
Don't get me wrong- I don't dislike Linux. I run it on every machine I have that can't run OS X. I just see these servers for the value that they are... and want to bring a happy, productive, less expensive life to you who have forsaken Apple. You deserve to get more done at lower cost too. (Unlike Windows fans, they deserve the torture they get.)
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Everybody, count to ten with me! 1,2,3,4... hmm 1,2,3,4 that's 10!
...
1. It doesn't use SCSI!!!
For a server, you bet your ass that SCSI matters, unless you're storing all your cache on a ramdisk? As for your comment about the Fiber Channel array - that's great, what's that going to add, $3000 to the price? And until it ships, it's vapor.
2. The G4 os SO SLOW!
...Hell, the entire UI for Apple will be a 3D rendered surface come the next release...
Once again, you are a dumbass for thinking that Floating Point is going to affect performance for a server AT ALL. Servers do not run photoshop filters! As for your comment about the whole UI being rendered in 3D, that's really great. I'm glad my server needs a fucking GeForce 4 to run!
3. I can build a better linux server for half the price!
Ok, but it won't be in 1U will it? 1U is an expensive case to buy (with built in sliding rails , remember.)
Here's a 1U Intel system with a starting price of $1099. It has SCSI, ECC ram, 2 Ethernet ports, and YES IT COMES WITH SLIDING RAILS. Yes, I realize that it's only got 18 gig HD, but you can add more and still come out cheaper than the mac. Or I can just buy 3 of them and it will still be comparably priced. And if you try and tell me that the Mac is a better deal than 3 1.1ghz intel systems, you really need to go take a cyanide pill.
4. Linux is FREE so there's no value in OS X! comaprisons to windows are Silly, NOBODY uses windows!
...OS X on the other hand is no cost to install
You obviously have never used anything other than MacOS. While Linux probably requires more than OSX server will with its pretty tools, if you have to actively "maintain" your server then there's probably something wrong with it. A server is supposed to just work. Also, I don't know anybody who has ever used a server with the operating system left as installed by the mfr. You always repartition and reformat the drive for various reasons, so you STILL have to reinstall the OS, and I don't know why you think installing linux takes so long? It takes about 20 minutes.
It's people like you who make me embarrassed to be a Mac fan. PLEASE STOP TAKING STEVE JOBS'S WORDS AS GOSPEL! HE IS NO MORE TRUTHFUL ABOUT HIS PRODUCTS THAN BILL GATES OR LARRY ELLISON!
Two words: Avie Tevanian. He's the man behind Mach - the microkernel at the heart of OS/X. Mach has had good clustering and distributed computing support from day zero.
Think about it. With relatively little effort, Apple could build a 64-cpu rack-mounted Mac. Any app that uses Mach threads - that is, any multi-threaded, native (Cocoa or Carbon) OS/X app - would be able to take advantage of them.
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
The Quartz & Aqua GUI are no more an essential part of the OS than, say, X11 & KDE are. If the GUI freezes up, ssh into the box & restart it. GUI != a bad server OS.
How can you trust a guy that can't even read the pricing on the Compaq website? He has posted an addendum to the article to say that the pricing on the Compaqs was for purchasing a 3-pack of the servers. So the pricing on the Compaq machines was 3 times the cost of 1. So now the Compaq machines drop to about $4,000 and $6,000. I wonder what other fact checking he forgot to do?
One manufacturer sells one for $1999, one for $2500, one for $2999, and two for $3500.
It is clear that the $1999 one is cheapest. But... if there's plenty of $3500 boxen being sold, is the $2999 one _competitive_? Or is it 'way overpriced', 'hopeless junk' and some of the other things we've heard? It'll sell.
But... they _aren't_ identical. At $2999 the xserve has some features/advantages (FW Front panel, raw storage density, Apple brand name, server utils) and some disadvantages (ECC/SCSI/Apple brand name) versus some of it's competitors. There are clearly a lot of places where suggesting an xserve would be silly. Places where 'high reliability' means five of six nines for the next couple of years for instance. Some places it would even get one fired (yes, some people hate Apple that much). But... That's not everywhere. And there are a lot of places with stuff stuffed into racks where 'high reliability' is NOT absolute - just preferred. Apple will do fine with these.
To all those people who think this is an overpriced machine: You're right! Yes, you're right. It is expensive. Will it sell? Yes. Why? Because Apples target markets, Video and audio production companies and schools and colleges who already have large installed bases of macs will buy them.
If you're one the I_can_build_my_pc_at_3am_while_snoring_loudly crowd you would probably always go for an x86 parts anyway. But do you run a company off it? Who do you go to if the server breaks down? Do you have a guarantee? Do you have easy managment tools? Can you configure Appletalk on the server side?
I have no doubt that this machine fits in somewhere in the middle of the pack for stats alone and that you can get cheaper and more expensive x86 machines, with SCSI etc etc. But it will still sell. I can't prove it to you, but I vote we take a look in six months when it the RAID option have been out for a few months.
Apple has this "you don't need parity" mentality, which is a serious problem. In rackmount servers, you want checking on everything, so when it breaks, you get an alarm. There's typically one person for every few hundred servers, after all; they have to run without attention and report when they have problems.
I wish I could provide more information, but the page where you could find out this information (put up by the gun grabbers themselves) is no longer up at:
http://www.progressivefunds.com/hci/
Nevertheless, while it WAS up, Crucial was one of several companies (along with Dell, McAfee, The Sharper Image, OfficeMax, and even Reader's Digest!) who you could signup with to donate part of your puchase to Handgun Control Inc.
Since I treat the Second Amendment with no less reverance than the first, I will never buy any products from any of these companies ever again.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/