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."

Comments

yay

[nemui-chan]

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? :)

Big surprise

[MalleusEBHC]

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?

Re:Big surprise

[Dephex Twin]

No, that's not a surprise that they are suddenly in the market... but it is very important to hear that they aren't simply being laughed off. People are actually taking at the Xserve seriously, and this is encouraging.

Re:Big surprise

[dbrutus]

Congratulations, you're not the target market. AFAIK, Apple's trying to compete with Dell, IBM, HP, etc. not with Joe Blow white box vendor down the street. I believe that most of the hardware price difference goes away if you compare only national brands and in a few configurations, the X-Serve is cheaper.

I always thought that the largest segment of users would be Windows refugees who use it for file and print services in unlimited license mode. For that scenario (and there are lots of people who need this), the XServe is *much* cheaper while the administrative ease means you don't need to radically upgrade your IT department skills.

Re:Big surprise

[overunderunderdone]

A few of mitigating factors.

First off, if you include Windows as your OS you've pretty much lost most of your "price advantage". If you include a windows license with unlimited clients the xServe has the price advantage. Linux is great for those with the skills and know-how to set it up and maintain it but for a small company or school with a negligible IT budget ease-of-use is important.

But Windows licensing fees aside these two machines aren't really all that comperable. You are definitely getting more machine for more money if you get the xServe. In almost every particular in the tech specs the Xserve is the better machine: 4 drive bays vs 2; Two 64-bit 66Mhz PCI slots & an AGP slot vs Two 32-bit 33Mhz PCI slots; 3 FireWire ports vs 0; Arguabley a faster CPU with a larger cache, 10/100/1000 ethernet as opposed to 10/100. etc. etc. etc.

The next Dell up is much closer comparison, it has some advantages the xServe lacks (most notably SCSI drives) and vice versa (the xServe still has more drive bays, FireWire, etc.) Since they don't match up feature for feature it can be harder to compare prices (it all depends on the features you find important) but they seem comparable in price running Linux and the xServe is clearly cheaper if you are running windows.

Re:Big surprise

[overunderunderdone]

The only conclusion that one can glean from the posts on this particular thread is that the target market for XServe is people who want to administer their own servers but have no real knowledge of how to go about it.

That is probably EXACTLY right. A large component of Apples target market is smaller businesses, & schools who want a decent UNIX server but don't have the budget for a UNIX guru. Or possibly larger businesses and schools that want to keep such costs down. Spending $3000 and being able to maintain it yourself can be a lot cheaper than spending $1000 and having to hire a UNIX administrator.

Re:Big surprise

[dbrutus]

Supermicro doesn't seem to sell a comparable configuration. Their 1 unit racks seem to all have 10/100 NICs. The Xserve configs all have dual gigabit connectors. They also don't have two full length PCI slots. As you noted, they also don't have 4 bays.

Apple's got a nice offering that's got some unique features. For people who care about space and bandwidth, you're going to be able to stuff more bits and move them in and out faster on the XServe.

Supermicro doesn't sell direct just through distribution so you're very much at the mercy of your reseller. Apple's service options are much more under the control of Apple directly and they seem to do well in the serice quality surveys year after year.

Apple certainly hasn't filled out their server line but for the market that it's targetted at (and that doesn't mean you, you've made it clear) it's a pretty good value proposition.

Re:Big surprise

[dbrutus]

Getting Samba to run is one thing, integrating a linux box into your directory service infrastructure so that HR can continue to add and remove computer rights seamlessly throughout the enterprise as they hire and fire is something slightly more complicated.

Re:Big surprise

[dbrutus]

I'm not even going to look at the 2650 because it's a 2U and thus isn't even in the same class. As Apple rolls out more servers it'll make sense to compare like to like.

The Dell 1650 with similar hard disk size, rails, an actual OS with Media (RedHat 7.2) and comparable NICs is $2652. You're right. If you're running Linux, the Dell is $350 cheaper. Take out the Linux and put in a 5 user Windows license and Xserve wins by a little less than $300. Take a look at a 25 user scenario and the Xserve wins by almost $2800.

Clearly, if the shop deploying the servers has ease of use issues with Linux, Xserve is the cheaper solution compared to Windows.

Way back at the top of the thread, the allegation was made that XServe is $1000 more expensive. It isn't. Rails, OS (with media), like networking options, etc. are going to erase much of the difference. For a lot of people, it seems worth it. For many others it won't be but to say that it isn't a credible offering is zealotry of its own.

In case you want to cry foul over the comparisons, here's the Dell options I chose.
Processor = 1.26Ghz PIII (standard, didn't change)
Rails = 4 post non-dell rails
Memory's left at the minimum 256Mb
No Direct Line, standard warranty service
standard cdrom, power supply, PCI riser.
no keyboard, monitor, or mouse
The closest storage option was the 72Gb HD used 1 with no fancy controllers.
I changed the NICs to 2 broadcom gigabit nics.

I could easily have eaten up those last $350 to make the Dell more expensive even using Linux. I was fair and didn't.

Re:Big surprise

[overunderunderdone]

The person referred to as the one who has no real knowledge of "how to go about it" must include yoursel

Yes, that is right. It also includes most people. And it includes most people that want to use computer technology to benefit their businesses but may not have the budget to afford the expertise of those who know "how to go about it". What a business opportunity for a technology company that caters to making technologies easy enough that even those who "don't know how to go about it" to "go about it" anyway.

Re:Big surprise

[dbrutus]

You're not paying attention, I'm not saying that the Dell 1650 sucks, I'm saying that Apple's 1st 1U server offering is credible and for *some* configurations is worth getting.

People want to compare Apple to white box, that's stupid because it isn't the market Apple is going after.

People want to compare Apple to name brands with warranty voiding 3rd party hardware, that's almost as stupid because the only reason to go name brand is service and warranty.

Apple's got a halfway decent 1u unit that frankly is going to go to mac shops, mixed windows/mac shops, and some windows only shops with a unix loving advocate in IT with Unix hating bosses. That's the market, that's what Apple is after, and the Xserve, in those terms, doesn't suck.

That's my point.

demand & licensing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

RAID, too

[big_oaf]

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"?

Re:RAID, too

[foobar104]

Can I get a "booyah"?

Um... no.

Why is price a concern?

[skippy5066]

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?

Re:Why is price a concern?

[dbrutus]

Here's a scenario, Microsoft house has been pirating CALs. They undergo an audit (perhaps the company is thinking of going public) and they find out they need $15k in licensing fees for file and print on two servers. There is no $15k in the budget to do this and going to periodic payments for those extra licenses leads the shop to move to Linux. The IT department can't stomach linux due to its raw edges and they migrate to Xserves for file and print and shift the file and print servers to some sort of number crunching app server or a dev server that requires no additional windows license.

Another scenario is in mixed shops that get an Xserve to satisfy the graphics guys and the IT departmant falls in love with it on cost (v. Windows, remember) and ease of use grounds. It spreads.

I'm sure there are other scenarios out there.

Re:Why is price a concern?

[Louis_Wu]

I like that. So many times in these discussions, we forget about a possible progression of events which could lead to X. (Ahem, 'X' being a variable, not necessarily a Mac OS.) When you start to think in terms of paths toward an end, getting to that end becomes more managable. It's like a ship which is off course by half a degree, you don't really notice it, but if you don't check your course mid-route, you're off by 26 miles after crossing the Atlantic. (Assuming that crossing the Atlantic is a 3000 mile trip.) A little nudge at the beginning, and you can get a big result in the end.

Take my case. I'm getting a PowerBook this week because I want the power of unix and ease of use. I like my Red Hat 7, but it's on the same machine as WinXP, where I play lots of games. So I reboot a LOT. Got tired of booting, put Mozilla on Windows, surf from there. But I can't learn Perl or use EMACS to write web pages, etc. Solution: another computer, dedicate one PC to Linux, the other to games. BUT, MacOS X has ease of use, unix, all in one shiny package. I can type in emacs while surfing in Moz, while putting my resume in a Word format (yuck, but some businesses really want it that way), while ... anything. :)

So for me the progression was Windows to Linux to Mac, because of my interests. If we could find more ways to identify specific interests and needs, we might be able to convert more people to something 'better', or set people on paths toward the better. I started using emacs on Win98. I think that started it for me. Maybe we can start others down the path of the light side in similar fashion.

Re:Stupid question?

[Steve Cowan]

It's pronounced "X Serve" (eks serv), according to Steve Jobs when he announced the product.

Synergy

[baldass_newbie]

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

Re:Synergy

[d3xt3r]

Sun and Apple both offer their customers the same thing: great OS and good hardware in one package from a single vender.

With Sun's foray into the low end Linux market, it seems like they're going to be competing more directly with XServe than teaming up with Apple.

Re:Synergy

[baldass_newbie]

Granted, they're now competing, at least with one line. So wouldn't this fall into the 'cheaper to buy than build' category?

The question then could be who buys who?

It would seem a natural fit in some ways. In other ways, I don't know. But it would definitely get two anti-MS teams together and could give Bill Gates fits he hasn't had since Borland was a threat.

Re:Synergy

[stux]

The problem I think is that Sun sees Apple's market as somewhere they want to go, and Apple sees Sun's market as something they'd like a slice of...

I mean, If IBM's new mini Power4 chip comes out, and Apple migrates to it, then Apple will be squarely on a path which will lead them to seriously powerful unix servers... Sun class...

(well, maybe not ;))

Re:AltiVec

[dadragon]

Actually, while IBM processors are in the G3 iBook, they do not have Altivec. One of the main differences between the G3 and the G4 is the presence of Altivec.

Re:Stupid Tax

[Perdo]

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...

Re:High-End?

[sedna]

The whole idea with the article is that high-end *vendors* are starting to sell Apple, not that Xserve is a high-end server. Both IBM and Sun have entry-level servers in the segment where Apple are aiming. With this trend, costumers will find Apple products as an alternative in the channels they usually use to buy Sun or IBM low-end servers.

Re:High-End?

[sedna]

You are right in principle, I suppose the correct term would be "Vendors of high-end systems". I am a phd Student at a meteorology department. Our computer park start with Sun workstations and end with Linux clusters and a couple of mid-range Sun servers. Even if we normally buy systems with the same or a little bit higher specs than Dell stuff, we do it from vendors that also sell huge server parks. The fact that these companies start to sell Xserve have, of course, no implication on their sales of Sun Fire 15k systems, but still, how many do they sell each year? The vast majority of costumers, that want a Cobalt server or a couple of Sun Blade 100, suddenly have more options. I think this is a good channel to people that want UNIX but don't need a huge setup.

I've Got One At the Moment

[Spencerian]

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.

Where can I get one?

[overunderunderdone]

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.

Re:Where can I get one?

[Perdo]

$145 x 2 Athlon 2000MP
$90 x 2 512MB PC2100 DDR Unbuffered (yes it is supported)
$195 Tyan Tiger MPX
$120 120 GB Drive.
$30 x 2 Gigabit NIC

$300 1U Chassis (holding two complete systems)

Spend a day finding prices, ordering and putting systems together. On a per unit basis, performance equivalent, you are saving $3000 each unit you purchased; sweat equity clusters.

I would not mind saving $3000 on a day of labor.

Imagine how unreliable they would be!

Well, if you only got 50% availability, you would still have three times the performance at any given price. But sadly, The Tyan Tiger is a stable board. It will give you at least 97% availability... So Apple is out of luck.

Apple Xserve has 1/6th the performance per dollar, 1/3rd the performance per 1U and 1/2 the performance per watt.

X Serve Makes an ungodly awfull server. It offers nothing in hardware to recomend it and OS X offers nothing for servers that It did not get from the free unix distros.

Apple is a tax on the stupid. I have given parts to juior high kids and they were able to build computers.

Re:Where can I get one?

[overunderunderdone]

OK about $1100 for the components and one day of labor. Is that one day a valid time estimate for someone who has never done it before? How much time to install and configure the software? What kind of warranty am I getting?

Assuming Apple is positioning this as the "server for the rest of us" how much will your time estimates above be affected if the person putting it together has never used a command line before? How much time will they have to spend learning about computers (not their real job) before this monster is useful for them? I would wager that the actual time for a graphic designer or school administrator who has never used a CLI before but wants a server for their growing firm/school is something more than a day and that the $3000 they save in initial costs will evaporate quickly in their own lost time learning skills that are irrelevant to their business or in hiring people that already possess those skills.

Re:AltiVec

[HiredMan]

As I recall, IBM doesn't have a license to run the AltiVec stuff

Actually, as a AIM partner IBM has full rights and access to the Altivec technology. They just don't seem to want it.

There were rumblings that IBM was 'rolling their own' version of vectoring that would not require special compilation as Altivec does - but that was a while ago and no hard evidence ever emerged. Now IBM is announcing (Oct. 15th) a scaled down Power4 with 160 vectored-operations unit. (Altivec has 162 operations.)
Draw your own conclusions - IBM either scaled the Power4 to PowerPC and added Altivec or their own brand of vectoring that has a very similar number of operations to Altivec.

=tkk

An Update Was: Re:AltiVec

[HiredMan]

Just after posting I saw this.

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

WRONG. Do some research before posting junk.

[BoomerSooner]

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.

Where's the Journaling Filesystem?

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.

Re:Where's the Journaling Filesystem?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Because 10.0...10.1.5 had left the disk is such a state of disarray (keys not found errors ... I've had a bug filed @Apple since 10.0 that they haven't worked on, see the parent post about fsck) that the installer refused to proceed. Norton Utilities couldn't fix it either. It worked just fine on my wife's iBook though, which has never had 10.0.x on it.

You do have 3 other choices: upgrade, archive and install, and clean install

None of the install options would have helped. Now, if they had a smart re-format option, which would rebuild the disk incrementally, moving my data out of the way as it went, now that would be slick.

Retract your condescending :sigh: and get a clue

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.