Apple Updates Xserve, Announces Xserve RAID

jht writes "This morning Apple introduced an updated Xserve and the long-awaited Xserve RAID. The relevant specs for new Xserve: single or dual G4/1.33, upgraded DDR 333 RAM, and FireWire 800 all added, with pricing between $2799 and $8248 for stock configs. The Xserve RAID specs: shipping in configs of 720GB for $5999, 1.26TB for $7499, or 2.52TB for $10999. It uses up to 14 180GB drive modules (each on a separate ATA/100 channel), and a pair of Fibre Channel interfaces to connect them to the Xserve."

Comments

Re:Not particularly impressive.

[ahknight]

Where are your redundant power supplies? Read the site, fool! This mamma has:

Redundant controllers
Redundant power supplies
Redundant fans
Redundant BUILT-IN UPS batteries (est. 72 hrs)

The drives, power supplies, controllers, fans, and batteries are all zero-downtime hot-swap. RAID 0, 1, 3, and 5, of course. No hardware two-level RAID, but Mac OS X offers 0 and 1 in software, so you could mix them to get 10 or 5+1, etc.

I about crapped myself when I saw this. No, your little FreeBSD box can't do this, sorry. ;)

Re:Not particularly impressive.

[Richard5mith]

"IDE doesn't cut it"

Tell that to Google.

Re:Apple's strategy

[Znonymous Coward]

Unless everyone uses Mac, there really isn't a reason for one of these, is there?

FALSE! Here is what you can use an Xserve for:

Samba SMB server (for Windows and Linux)
NFS Server (for Unix/Linux)
DHCP server (all OSs)
Apache http server (all OSs)
MySQL or Postgres Servers (all OSs)
POP, IMAP and SMTP Servers (all OSs)
FTP Server (all OSs)
QuickTime Streaming Server (all OSs)
DNS (all OSs)

NOW WITH RAID 5

[goombah99]

Woohoo. I have to eat my own words posted above. I just finished looking over the detailed specs in the apples pdf file and it turns out that the new RAID box has raid 5. this is great news. I wonder if they will retrofit the old 1-U xesrves to raid 5? or is the a feature of the new hardware raid controller?

any how I was mistaken--the apple web page did not mention the raid 5 so I assumed it was just the same as the old 1-U xserve. sorrty for the misinfomation

Re:Is anyone using XServe in production environmen

[DigitalVolume]

I seriously doubt that Apple will cancel these machines. From a review last fall (which I can't remember the link to), the Xserve has jumped Apple up to around 1% or 2% of the server market as a whole. Before the Xserve Apple had maybe .25%. The Xserve is being reviewed heavy in lots of companies all over the place. Maybe not yours. But maybe yours should look at it. I also haven't seen ONE poor review of the Xserve anywhere.

The Xserves have been a bit noisy (understatement), but they've been unparalelled server boxes at my office. We haven't had one of our 5 servers go down since we bought our first last May when it was introduced. And then our other 4 last September. We've rebooted for maybe 3 security updates and a couple of OS updates. That's about it. They're great.

It's not so much the specs (which agreeably are not bad), as much as it's about the ease of setup (less than 10 minutes including rack screws), and the UNLIMITED CLIENTS. People here on /. seem to miss this one. with Sun, MS, or another standard server OS based on *NIX you have to pay per-seat lincensing out the wazoo! UNLIMITED clients for an OS which is SUPPORTED is a phenominal deal.

My $0.02

Re:Oh, great.

[Znonymous Coward]

Apple has a 10-day return policy. You can return it and order a new one or keep this one and get a credit for the difference. Call the Apple store and talk with them about it.

Xserve as workstation

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this yet. Apple has a little blurb on the Xserve page, at the bottom on the right, that says,

The workstation for digital video

Thinking of using Xserve as a workstation for working with digital video? Good call: You can get a built-to-order unit from the Apple Store with an AGP 4X graphics card with 64MB of DDR video RAM installed in the AGP/PCI combo slot. Final Cut Pro and optional high-performance PCI cards for audio and real-time video editing complement the solution.

That's new, isn't it? I remember that there was a lot of talk when Xserve first came out about using it as a workstation, and the consensus was that it wouldn't work very well because the graphics card didn't offer much. I guess Apple was listening. I can think of four post-production houses within ten miles of my house that would be interested in replacing some of the Final Cut systems with Xserves. Keep a couple of G4's around for doing audio and video I/O, but do all the creative work on rack systems in the main equipment room. Very cool.