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Xserve Competes With High-End Unix Servers
wayneh writes "There is a great article at ITworld.com about how Apple's Xserve is finding its way to high-end server vendors. The vendors who traditionally sold Sun and IBM servers are now looking into and stocking the Xserve as their clients become curious about the system. It'll be interesting to see how well the Xserve does among its more traditional competitors."
It'll be nice to see Apple get out of its rut as a graphics machine and only in schools. Macs are great machines... it used to just be the OS that (tech) people didn't like... and now even thats not a problem. (Did I get the first post? :)
I'm a diehard Mac guy, but I'll be the first to admit that Apple has not put out competitive servers before the XServe. When Apple changed from offering basically souped up Powermacs with a non *nix OS to one of the best 1U servers on the market running OS X, does it really surprise anyone that they are going to be getting attention in markets of which they traditionally were not even on the radar?
This is great to see. I hope that Apple can scale their production volume to keep up with the demand. I think one of the major selling points is that it comes with an Unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server, unlike any Windows 2000 Advanced Server setup. Licenses are expensive, and I know that's been a major factor in us moving away from Novell NetWare here at my university.
If you remember way back in May when Apple introduced the Xserve, they also previewed a 2GB RAID solution. According to this relatively old c|net article:
Apple also previewed a future storage device, the Xserve RAID, a 5.25-inch thick cabinet that can contain 14 hard drives for a total capacity of 1.68 terabytes. The system has two 2-gigabit-per-second Fibre Channel connections, a high-speed connection technology for communicating with servers.
There have been some rumblings around the Mac rumor community that this will soon debut. Can I get a "booyah"?
-- My hovercraft is full of eels.
I'm actually waiting for a faster processor (scaled down Power4, etc.) and better memory bandwidth. I would like a 64 processor rack for some serious computations. Though I can afford it, I don't want to go down headache-road with a PC-based rack. Does anyone have an Xserve with myrinet?
At the end of the article, it says:
"The challenge is, who is going to buy it?" Eunice said. "There is so much pricing pressure and competition in the market. The reality is that Apple will have a hard time going to financial communities or telcos with this product."
Apple gives you an UNLIMITED client license - how can the article offer this as a serious concern when licensing cost is such a big concern, especially for Micrsoft houses?
What about factoring in the pricing for multiple licenses vs. unlimited licenses?
..and 4 times the admins to run it.
As I recall, IBM doesn't have a license to run the AltiVec stuff, which is kind of a hinderance to deploy machines the IBM Power processors, but maybe that doesn't affect the Xserve machines. I wonder if they'll finally get a license or resolve that. I could be wrong though.
I can pull shit out of my ass too. Explain how this config you have mentioned would be as easy to set up as the Xserve, how much support you would get (if you use a commercial UNIX then that ups the cost), how well these x86 shitboxen would run and how much time and effort would be put into regular maintenance, etc.
I mean, you act like it is so obvious, but it just isn't.
You think of Apple as a tax for stupid people?
I think of Apple as filtering out the ignorant.
Erm... I'm confused.
I thought that the Apple Xserve boxes were 1U Dual 1GHz G4 machines with ATA/100 7200rpm Hard drives.
How exactly does this compare with the type of High-End systems that companies like IBM and Sun sell?
These machines rank along side the Entry Level / Workgroup type machines and are hardly the cutting edge of power.
I like Apples kit, but please call it what it is.
I've only read about the Xserve, and have not heard it pronounced by Apple.
Is it pronounced:
X-serve?
Ten-serve?
Zerve?
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
This is a completely baseless assertion. The constant may not be 4. Clustering may not be suitable in a specific situation. And you haven't remotely touched on reliability, support, or any other decision criteria-- many of which are far more important to TCO than initial purchase price of hardware and OS.
I do not have a signature
It's Servii
The current issue of the german c't magazine has a comparison of Apples XServe vs. Dells PowerEdge 1650.
Basically what they are saying is that for low-end office serving the XServe does well, however, as more performance is needed, the PowerEdge clearly wins (Linux). Administration and integration in Mac OS X environments are strengths of the XServe. Want more power, go for Dell/Linux.
Lars
In the article they talk repeatedly about the ability of XServe to talk with Sun boxes. They also talk about the XServe filling a niche Sun doesn't.
Is it me or would an Apple/Sun alliance make a lot of sense? I mean, besides the egos involved. You'd have server (high/low end and database) coupled with desktop.
Plus you'd have all of the stuff that MicroSoft wants working together (clean desktop for idiots, server market, stability, security) Just wondering
The opposite of progress is congress
Unix + x86 + clustering = 40 times the admin/headaches of Apple.
That was classic intercourse!
I still don't know how well apple will do with xserve - but I do know it has some great possibilities. My thoughts are that apple snuck this one past them all ... and will hit them hard. Unix + sleek hardware + sleek front-end ... go apple!
mx
Company policy (for security reasons) is that ALL software must be compiled from source. The source must be checked by our guys first, who grep the hell out of it for backdoors, etc.
We'd * * * L O V E * * * to have MacOS X in here, but it ain't gonna happen until Apple loosens up the reins a bit and lets the customers in. Look at it this way -- right now, if anybody messes with Apple in ANY WAY, no matter how small, they always sic their legal department on them and kick the offending ass ruthlessly. It stands to reason that in the event that Apple gave out source code with their stuff, and somebody tried to port OS X to x86 or whatever from the code given out with the CDs, they'd sue the living hell out of that person, leaving him gasping for air and holding his nuts. They can protect their code legally, instead of by obscurity, which harms the customer as well as Apple themselves (if you understand the "many eyes" theory). They don't have to GPL it, just include it under the same strict license they use for everything else.
I think we're coming to a crossroads, and there's two possible futures we have to choose from; the first is that we live in a completely corporately controlled bigbrother world, where we have no choice whatsoever to what hardware and software we use or how, and in which backdoors and spyware and privacy violations are simply understood, and that legally, the customer's rights are zero; or that we live in a world where we compile everything from source because of the great diversity of hardware choices and possible uses and configurations. Free Software and Open Source flourish because people have gotten tired of letting the big companies use and abuse them beyond what is right or fair. The software that is not "free as in freedom" still comes with source, because it is of great value to the customers, and the customers demanded it.
"We'll issue a security patch WHEN we have a lot of complaints. Until then, sorry, it's not worth fixing. Maybe in the next Service Patch." - actual Microsoft employee to one of our sysadmins. Of course, this was before security month or whatever, but still....
I like option number two better. I personally don't want to have to admin all our boxes and compile everything, but I like having the option to do so if required. And with computers in the future, and better languages, compiling will hopefully be faster and more "one-clicky".
Just ramblin' out loud.
BlackBolt
A partial fix will atleast allow you to get Apple hardware. Strip off OSX server, and install Darwin. You may lose alot of what makes the XServe great, such as ease of administration, but at least you'd have stable hardware.
XServe + OSX Server + Rondevous = easy livin
There must be some truth in Apple's benchmark http://www.apple.com/xserve/performance.html BLAST results: At the short word length of 9, the Xserve is 21 times faster than the IBM eServer x330 and 52 times faster than the Sun Fire V100. At the long word length of 40, Xserve is 5.8 times faster than the IBM eServer x330 and 13.4 times faster than the Sun Fire V100.
The XServe is already fairly cheap for the power it provides. The ability to put 480 gigs in the box only adds to this cost-effectiveness, given the cost of rack space (though they need to make the internal drives SCSI). The company I work at has been very successful using lots of inexpensive boxes to scale to a large number of users. I think something like the XServe would be excellent in this type of environment.
However, Apple needs to decide where they want to go with the XServe and their server business in general. Do they keep it as an entry-level offering and add bigger servers above it? Do they build a clustering system to make it easy to scale in the way I mentioned earlier? Both? My fear is that they will try to target it to their traditional core customers (artists, designers, etc.) rather than using it as an opportunity to branch out into new areas. In other words, they'll make it work really well as a rendering box but not as a server. On the other hand, one could certainly question whether the world needs another UN*X server vendor and whether Apple is equipped to take on Sun, Dell, and IBM.
On a different note, what about an Apple X (well, Aqua really) Terminal? A lab full of Apple Terminals powered by a half-dozen XServes racked in the corner would be pretty cool...
It sounds to me that you are biased and not capable of making rational decisions based on facts.
First of all, Darwin is completely open source, you can compile the kernel on both Mac and PC, and Apple don't force anyone to use their GUI . Secondly, what has MS got to do with Apple? The last (and the only) OS X security issue was fixed by Apple within 3 days since the discovery.
Slashdot - Dictionary = typical post
LOL!! Sounds to me like YOU are biased. The xserve isn't a rational decision for an open source shop at all. The guy said the company he works at, _NOT HIM_ won't install anything without checking the code first. And everyone knows the kernel is only one part of the whole. So it's open sourced, big deal. It's of no use to this guy's company, and it's of no use to me either. Apple can put backdoors in their GUI or iTunes or whatever as easily as the kernel. If the whole system isn't all open, you'll never know FOR SURE. I'll stick to Free/OpenBSD/Gentoo/Whatever before I go to a kernel that's obsolete and badly designed but hanging on by pure ca$h infusions from Apple and the macaddicts who would buy a bag of crap if Apple put their logo on it. And by the way, how is the "Apple Experience" WITHOUT the GUI??? Without the "LICKABLE" Aqua GUI, why would anyone choose a Mac over a FREE and OPEN system that runs on a variety of hardware without "VICIOUS VENDOR LOCKIN"? Hell, why would they choose a Mac over Win2000? I wouldn't, and I hate Microsoft. At least there'd be a good choice of apps and support. And M$ and Apple, if you read the post, are _both corporations in tight control of their code_. IN MOST RESPECTS, THEY ARE NO DIFFERENT. The guy said he wants to be able to fix his own systems without having to get outside help. Maybe with M$' Shared Source, but NOT WITH APPLE. If Apple was bigger, it would be AS BAD or WORSE than M$. Believe it. And just because they fixed the last bug made public doesn't mean they'll fix them all that fast, or at all, or that they'll tell you when one is found. You're TRUSTING them to fix them, and TRUSTING a corporation to look out for you is stupid. If you'd ever adminned an NT system or owned a Pinto, you'd understand. Apple's offering is not a very strong contender to get ME to buy, and I bet the other guy - or his company - ain't sold either.
The problem with an open source hothead like you is that your argument is driven by ideology and emotion rather than logic, and it's really annoying.
>> Apple can put backdoors in their GUI or iTunes or whatever as easily as the kernel. If the whole system isn't all open, you'll never know FOR SURE.
Is there evidence or reason for Apple to do this, or is this just total garbage from your otherwise empty head?
>> I'll stick to Free/OpenBSD/Gentoo/Whatever before I go to a kernel that's obsolete and badly designed but hanging on by pure ca$h infusions from Apple and the macaddicts who would buy a bag of crap if Apple put their logo on it.
Obsolete and badly designed, by what standard? Have you ever used OS X before you open your filthy mouth? I would say Apple's OS technology is at least 5 years ahead of Linux or anything else in the industry.
>> Hell, why would they choose a Mac over Win2000? I wouldn't, and I hate Microsoft.
Xserve with unlimited client license is priced similarly to a Dell with a MS server OS for 10 clients, not to mention OS X's far superior stability and security.
>> If Apple was bigger, it would be AS BAD or WORSE than M$.
How do you work that one out?
>> If you'd ever adminned an NT system or owned a Pinto, you'd understand. Apple's offering is not a very strong contender to get ME to buy.
You sound like an MSCE pretending to know something about open source.
Perhaps that is because you are stupid...
What is the cost of multiple Linux licences?
FreeBSD?
NetBSD?
What is the cost of OS X Server?
Now double the Number of machines that need the licences to achieve the same performance that x86 offers...
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
> You sound like an MSCE pretending to know something about open source.
I think you hit the nail on the head - I smell a Wintroll who's trying to stop the Linux, BSDUnix, and Mac communities from getting together and kicking Microsoft's butt in every way possible - Gnu.Linux excels on the server side (recompiling and optimization for speed, no licensing, inexpensive hardware, standards compliance, stability) and OS X on the desktop (Aqua, gorgeous hardware, iTools, ease of use, many corporate level apps, and nice tools to remotely admin that Linux box - with fink, etc.).
From "embrace and extend" to "divide and conquer". Sounds about right for a Microsoft shill.
One minute he says he hates Microsoft, then he recommends it over OS X or Linux. Then he implies that Apple are more corrupt per person than MS, it's just not noticeable since they're smaller. Weird. And that guy seriously needs to lay off the capital letters. He gave me a headache.
Although I agree with his comparison of NT and the Pinto. Hit the wrong button and Kaboom!
-Eve-
I presume that you are also using open source COMPILERS that have been check for back doors, etc.?
And, then there are some of the undocumented hardware "features" contained within both Intel CPUs and "chips" on some motherboards, who's purpose is unclear.
Ya, you can be sure that you are running clean code . . . . yup . . . .
I just purchased two 0.5 terrabyte disk servers. One was a mac xserve (dual cpu, dual gig E, 480 GB) for about $6000. and I purchased a "whitebox" linux server based on a supermicro chasis, 420GB of scsi drives, dual P4 xeon, and dual gig-E, for about $8500.
Both of these are capable of 100Megabit/sec transfers from disk to clients and otherwise have similar specs. I shopped around quite a bit. there are cheaper NAS solutions but not with specs to match this. In addition to being a better price the mac has much better remote management software, simpler connectiviy, hot swapable drives, comes in a 1U chasis (instead of 2U) and is built like a brick shithouse. Additionally I know I can buy a premium 24 hour service for the mac if I so desire, that I can buy a parts kit for the mac to eliminate down time, and software uprades are a snap with no hunting for driveres for generic hardware.
the mac is cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain and takes up less room and heat.
The cost of OS X Server when you buy an XServe is exactly the same as the cost of multiple Linux/FreeBSD/NetBSD licenses: $0. How do you like them apples? (pun intended)
For $2,999.00 from Apple you can get an XServe with a single 1Ghz G4, 256mb of ram, 60 gig hard drive and Dual gigabit ethernet.
;)
For $2,999.00 DIY you can buy THREE systems consisting of Dual Athlon 2000 @ 1.67Ghz, 120 gig drive,1 Gig ram and dual gigabit ethernet (2 will fit in 1u)
$3,999.00 from Apple you can get an XServe with Dual 1Ghz G4s, 512mb of ram, 60 gig hard drive and Dual gigabit ethernet.
Four Dual Athlons
$7,499.00from Apple you can get an XServe with a single 1Ghz G4, 2048mb of ram, 4 x 120 gig hard drives and Dual gigabit ethernet.
SEVEN DUAL ATHLONS.
In some cases the performance of a G4 equals The Athlon 2000. But in most cases the G4 performs indenticly to the Athlon clock for clock - with only 60% of the athlon's clock speed and only 60% of the Athlon's performance.
So we can give the Athlon a vague performance value of 32 per 1000 dollars while the Xserve gets a performance value of 3 per thousand dollars at the 3000 dollar range, 5 per thousand in the 4000 dollar range and back to 2.5 in the 7,500 dollar range.
14 Athlons at 1667 or 2 G4s at 1000mhz.
Give me a break. Don't EVER compare Apples Price/Performance to ANYTHING. God damn bleak comparison for the mac zealots. I don't know why you guys bother.
But the OS is FREE
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
jeezus retard everybody uses GCC and knows about the intel big brother number. you're not saying anything a grade 4 doesn't know.
The Xserve is a LONG beast, easily the length of a typical rack, where most 2 or 3U servers are half that length.
Generally, the Xserve is a sweet beast in speed and performance, particularly with a prerelease of 10.2 Server I have installed.
Some of Apple's claims are weak right now, although they are doing a bit to help me with that now. The biggest disappointment was LDAP/Windows Active Directory authentication, which failed miserably in my 10.1 tests. My 10.2 update may have cleared that up, but Apple's documentation group needs some infusion from the other server OS documentation people for more concise instructions.
It's support apps are very good, and the OS sticks to virtually all IP standards, making the thing easy to administer. Configure, no, but administer, yes.
I can see this box being a good, less expensive alternative to a few of the Compaq boxes sitting around it.
The real gem of the Xserve is not the box, but the power of the OS behind it. This box would not be possible without Mac OS X Server 10.2. I have 10.1 Server running on an older 2-processor G4, serving a heavy load. It is a very stable, efficient box.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Since you apparently work for free, I might have a position for you in our IT department.
If you can build so many IU Servers for this price, provide the links to all the component parts and a proper calculation of its costs or stay out of the debate.
What is going to spur Xserve sales is this! Or here's what apple shows.
I'm very excited but still waiting on the G5/64Bit architecture and a better implemenation to avoid bottlenecks, something more closely resembling Solaris/SPARC with the ease of use of Mac OS (10.2).
For $2,999.00 DIY you can buy THREE systems consisting of Dual Athlon 2000 @ 1.67Ghz, 120 gig drive,1 Gig ram and dual gigabit ethernet (2 will fit in 1u)
Where can I order these? I'm interested.
For whatever it's worth someone's reporting that the IBM vectoring is NOT Altivec and isn't Altivec compatible.
I vote for calling it Altivec2 and using this chip whatever it takes... I'd much rather hitch my future to IBMs engineering and manufacturing than Moto's.
=tkk
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
I'm sure someone else has already said this but here it goes anyway:
Apple, Motorola and IBM all created the 160 128Bit instructions cooperatively. Altivec is the brand name that Motorola uses, it has nothing to do with the instruction set. IBM can use the instructions they just cannot name it Altivec unless Motorola says okay and allows them to license the name or just use it for free (unlikely).
So IBM is integrating the "Altivec" instructions it will be branded a different name more than likely.
Seriously, I use macs for all my desktops, but since I've seen the JFS light on linux, I won't even consider running a server without a journaling filesystem. HFS+ is far too fragile - I had to reformat both my G4 and my powerbook to upgrade to Jaguar (fsck.hfs+ doesn't fix all hfs+ problems; it reports them and tells you to go find a better disk utility) and UFS doesn't have a journal.
This is marginal at best for a desktop and totally unacceptable for a server. Apple can't play in this market if they're not willing to cover some really basic software requirements. They've got some great hardware in X-Serve, but who's going to want their big RAID array if you can't store files reliably on it? They need to move beyond thinking, 'oh, we'll get lots of QTSS customers using them' if they really want to make inroads into the market.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
RAID and Journaling Filesystems aren't interchangable, they solve two separate problems. They're complementary technologies.
RAID provides for hardware reliability. Lose 1 disk, and you don't lose your data.
A Journaling Filesystem provides for filesystem integrity in the event of a catastrophic event (complete loss of power, kernel panic, system hardware failure, etc.). Roughly, data is written to a journal, the journal is marked dirty, the data is copied to the filesystem, the journal is maked clean (I know folks, I'm oversimplifying).
With a straight RAID solution if an event occurs that would corrupt your filesystem, say a system crash, you have two or more copies of the same error, which doesn't help. With a journaling filesystem, the journal is replayed at fsck time, and any interrupted data writes are stored onto the filesystem safely.
This method is extremely important for real servers because fsck can be skipped on reboot if need be (even if it's not ideal). fsck can take an unacceptably long time on sufficiently huge volumes (I run a couple 2 TB volumes, it's deadly). You could never *think* of skipping fsck on a non-journaled filesystem. The best implementations will store the journal in NVRAM and/or have disks without write buffering.
Apple's fibre channel RAID system looks like great hardware, but without a journaling filesystem it's going to take time on the order of hours to come back up after a crash with a full X-serve cabinet. Noone can run a mission-critical server like that.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I am a homosexual. I bought an Apple computer because of its well earned reputation for being "the" gay computer. Since I have become an Apple owner, I have been exposed to a whole new world of gay friends. It is really a pleasure to meet and compute with other homos such as myself. I plan on using my new Apple computer as a way to entice and recruit young schoolboys into the homosexual lifestyle; it would be so helpful if you could produce more software which would appeal to young boys. Thanks in advance.
with much gayness,
Father Randy "Pudge" O'Day, S.J.
I would say Apple's OS technology is at least 5 years ahead of Linux or anything else in the industry.
I do enjoy OS X, but that statement is simply not true. OS X does not include any journaling file systems, IPv6, etc.
Apple is way ahead when it comes to the user interface, but BSD is known for its stability and free license - not cutting-edge technology.
Obsolete and badly designed, by what standard? Have you ever used OS X before you open your filthy mouth? I would say Apple's OS technology is at least 5 years ahead of Linux or anything else in the industry.
This is the biggest load of shit i have ever heard.
xserve: no ecc, no hardware raid, no redundant power, slowest possible SPECed CPU, uses IDE not scsi.
OS X. no ipv6, no real filesystem. not nearly what FreeBSD 4 WAS, let alone what FreeBSD 5 will be. No support from other vendors outside of Apple. Juniper JUNOS uses FreeBSD as an archetype. IBM is porting pthreads2, JFS, and a host of other things including S390 support to linux. NUMA quads. Man, OS X cant ever THINK of EVER EVER running on the caliber of hardware which has become routine for Linux.
this thread has been destoyed by complete zealotry.
to the part about it being Open, Darwin is open, and its UNUSEABLE, barely portable CRAP. So much for Open Apple.
NO one here is suggested the use of Windows 2000. The argument is against FreeBSD or Linux. And you little fairies using OS X can only point at other less assholic industry zealots for reference. We the implementers and uses of Linux and FreeBSD will just mock you, the minions of Apple feeding Steve Slobs Cupertino cash machine, at every mention of an Apple product.
As far as Apple being worse scaled out to the size of microsoft, its true. they are such neo Nazis its unreal. blocking memory and cpu upgrades, voiding warranties for using your machine, making underage developers quit the darwin project, forcing people to not use Aqua like themes on Classic Mac, the list is rife with foul behavior.
By the way, there is a G4 sitting here with 1GB of memory. Its my most pathetic machine, and I have PCs right next to it that are 6 months older that outperform it. Mototola PPC is so slow, that Linux even runs like crap on it.
GREAT POST!! Facts are such a rarity here on Slashdot, especially in the Apple section. Emotion and Reality Distortion Fields are the prime motivators of the zealots, who have apparently never specced out a non-Apple system just to see how pitifully far behind they really are.
It's up to the MacHeads to put pressure on Apple, but they've failed miserably - because they'd rather worship Steve Jobs when he introduces a 1 Ghz Mac. You can buy AlienWare or Falcon PCs with dual procs just under 3 Ghz each on a faster bus, faster RAM, faster HD's, and faster OSes. And the same price or LOWER. Windows/Linux/BeOS isn't THAT much worse than OS X....
Wow. Cool. First time a guy ever proposed using open source, gave logical reasons behind his argument (security, transparency, standards) and got modded a troll. Stupid moderators. "Anything anti-Apple must be modded down, regardless of truthfulness". You suck. You're worse than paid shills, you're UNPAID shills. Zealot users are the number one roadblock holding Apple back. They don't ever have to improve because you keep telling them they're perfect. You're all so stupid.