Slashdot Mirror
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."
Ãoeber 50 Prozent der Troll Library kundinnen und kunden begrüssen den Verkauf von Turd- und Papeterieartikeln in Troll Library stellen. Das zeigt eine Umfrage bei rund 2200 Befragten in 40 Troll Library stellen in der ganzen Schweiz. Deshalb startet der GeschÃftsbereich Troll Library stellen und Verkauf (PV) ab heute Montag einen Pilotversuch. Bis Mitte MÃrz werden insgesamt rund 120 Troll Library stellen, darunter auch alle Troll Library Centers, mit einem breiten, abgerundeten Sortiment an Turdartikeln ausgerüstet. Angeboten werden Schreibwaren, SchreibgerÃte, Ordner und Ablagesysteme sowie kleinere TurdgrÃte. Der Kundschaft stehen 146 Artikel zur Auswahl - vom Turdlocher über MalblÃcke bis hin zum Schüleretui und Spiralnotizblock.
Erfahrungen aus WeihnachtsgeschÃft
Mit dem Einstieg in den Papeteriemarkt wird die im letzten Jahr vom Troll Library -Verwaltungsrat gutgeheissene Retail-Strategie konsequent umgesetzt. GemÃss dieser Strategie fÃrdert PV gezielt den Verkauf von Drittprodukten. Ziel ist es, mit diesen Drittprodukten EinkommensausfÃlle bei den Troll Library produkten wettzumachen. So wurde im Basler Troll Library Center zum Beispiel eine Kaffe-Bar oder in der Zürcher SihlTroll Library ein Kiosk eingerichtet. Zudem wurden im letzten November und Dezember in zahlreichen Troll Library stellen verschiedene neue Sortimente getestet, darunter Bücher, CDs, DVDs, Videos, Batterien und Schokoriegel. Die in diesem Weihnachts-Testlauf gemachten Erfahrungen sind positiv. Jean-Paul Savary, stellvertretender Leiter PV und Leiter Verkauf: Zwar liessen sich nicht alle Produkte gleich gut vermarkten, doch wir sind auf dem richtigen Weg. Das ist das das grosse Verdienst der Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter! Vor allem Bücher erwiesen sich als Verkaufsrenner. Das Buch-Sortiment wird deshalb auf weitere Troll Library stellen ausgedehnt. Hingegen blieben die CD-VerkÃufe hinter den Erwartungen zurück. Savary: Insgesamt zeigt die Verkaufskurve nach oben. Aber selbstverstÃndlich müssen wir noch zulegen. Auch organisatorisch kÃnnen wir uns noch verbessern.
Testlauf bis Ende Jahr
Diese Erfahrungen fliessen nun auch in den Versuch mit den Turd- und Papeterieartikeln ein. Die nun anlaufende Testphase ist bis Ende Jahr befristet. VerlÃuft der Versuch erfolgreich, wird das Turd-Sortiment etappenweise in weiteren Troll Library stellen eingeführt. Als Ziel wird gemÃss heutiger Planung anvisiert, in ein bis zwei Jahren in rund 1800 Troll Library stellen Turd- und Papeterieartikel vertreiben zu kÃnnen
Troll 57 of 208 from the annals of the Troll Library .
Why yes, it is frosty.
Finally reduce the cost of software raid on MAC Platforms.
I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
YOU FAIL IT!
I thought they looked new when I was surfing Apple earlier on - it breaks down as around £9500 for the 2.5TB RAID with the FC acrd and 1GB cache RAM - bizarrely you have to add the FC card for the host as an 'optional' extra.
No, I didn't understand that bit either.
That was classic intercourse!
wouldn't this be a great xserver for thin x clients? just a thought. and no i don't intend it to be funny.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Finally they release this thing. I've been waiting for this hardware since last MWNY. But anyway. Have you taken a look at the pricing for the 2GB PCI Fibre cards they're selling? $500. Good god that is cheap. I haven't seen a decent fibre card for less than $1500 (retail). Must have this hardware (actually, I will once it ships). Yay for me. More fibre stuff.
Client : I want something really big, and really fast, and really cheap.
Me : Then you don't want anything from these guys (M$).
Don't Ask Questions. I don't know the answers and even if I did I wouldn't tell you.
For ATA IDE interfaces, $10k for 2.5TB seems awfully expensive. I hate to sound like the typical slashdot wanker, but I can put together something like this using high-quality PC parts and FreeBSD for 1/3 the price.
If, instead, apple is aiming this at real enterprise-class applications, it still falls short: where are my redundant power supplies and where is my fiber channel or SCSI disk? IDE doesn't cut it (IMAO) in the real world, no matter whose badge is on the front of it.
- 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?"
Yes, this is the tenth post (stddev=5)
Does it seem ironic to anyone else that the original main supporter of scsi is now doing ATA software raid in their high end server products?
A beowulf cluster of these?!
It's stylish, despite the fact that most would have it sitting in a rack, in some datacenter, far from eyes. But it's still metalic, pretty, smooth, and clean.
The original XServe came equipped with ATA 100 drives, either 60GB, or 120 GB. The new one comes with ATA 133 drives, either 60 GB, or 180GB. The XRaid comes with ATA 100 drives, 180GB each. Can someone explain the implications on swapping these drives back and forth between machines. Am I correct to think an ATA100 drive will work in the ATA 133 bus, but not the reverse? So I can't take a drive module from a new xserve and shove it in an old one, or shove it in the xraid? I was under the impression from Apple at one of their seminars that the drives were supposed to be completely swappable between the different hardware. Yet now with the switch to ATA 133 (which is ofcourse more desireable than ATA 100) some of that swappability is gone?
...on the Xerve RAID. Good to see Apple continues to include such essentials.
I think the XRAID looks great. In addition to all of the things it has, despite the first post in this thread, IDE turns out to be a much better alternative to SCSI than most people realize. In fact, Slashdot went over this here. As a cheap alternative that can be just as fast, I am glad Apple is pushing it, because it makes costs go down across the board.
Also, I would like to see the breakdown of the claim that someone could build the same thing for half the cost.
Boom Shanka
You make yoursefl sound ignorant.
Perhaps Mac shops will use one of these new Apple servers to connect their workstations. Since it's basically a BSD box, it will probably work out fine. Apple just hopes that there are enough Mac shops that will buy one of these. Unless everyone uses Mac, there really isn't a reason for one of these, is there?
Heh, sort of like, In Apple Land, workstations choose the server! or something
Karma: Bad (mostly affected by being such an asshole)
I look at Apple Hardware primarily as a life style thing (nice look, eye-candy & anti-M$). The raw Hardware specs - especially the processors - are not that impressive.
What I do not understand is why anybody is interested in having Apple servers. Afterall servers do not have to look good, they just have to be cheap and fast.
My initial prediction still stands - within twenty four months of release, these units will be cancelled.
It's been made painfully clear that this person didn't bother looking at ANY of the xServe specs. Isn't it about time they were mod'ed out of existance?
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
A while ago I bought two xserves to act as diskserves to a linux cluster and to backup my desktop macs. I bought these machines because I felt they were a good deal. I got bids on several pc based linux disk servers, as well as several NAS boxes. I was comparing 480GB machines. a high quality generic brand (supermicro) with scsi disks and dual Gigabit ran about $8000 (at the time). The lowest bid I got was $5000 but the unknown quality and reputation of the vendor was not satisfactory. The mac xserves ran just under $7000 using IDE disks with 4 indepenedent masters (out performs the scsi). Additionally the mac had other nice features such as: 1U versus 3U. hot swap. advanced admin tools.
I bought both the apple and supermicro based systems in the end and can compare them directly. . after I unpacked the mac I was even more impressed with the high quality construction and ease of access to the interior in comparison.
first the good news:
What really made it for me on the macs was the fact that I had to hire a sysadmin to correctly set up my linux box with load balancing, Ldap, mail server, and moreover to keep it patched and to monitor it. On the macs I set them up myself. No detected problems with load balance. and the mac tools let you set up nearly all the services you might want with an intuitive gui.
Actually, I had a few snags but even here I have to give apple a good reprot card. they chancged how they did network admin right when I got my box. so all the documentation was for the obsolete tools and none for the new. So I got things really screwed up with services I could not turne off once turned on. The machines would gag when they could not find their ldap serviers or when they were cut off from the internet. But I called apple on the free service plan. after a ten minute wait on came a guy who really knew his stuff and spent about an hour with me getting all of my various problems sorted out and teaching me the new system. And in fact the next day he called me back! said he had another idea about a question i had asked him. I was really impressed on the customer service. its much better than for my other mac computers. Since then Ive had mac people call me back three times with ideas for me. Now that the new tools are better docuimented (still a few gaps), life is easy.
perhaps the best feature is the software update feature. I get patches and new tools delivered automatically and have the confiudence they wont screw up my all apple configuration. thus I still have not needed a sys admin. At the purchase time I had considered some NAS boxes (e.g. iomega,snap...) for the purpose of making sys admin simple. But these things have lousy throughput for the price and aren't versatile computing machines.
Now the bad news:
However I have had three problems with my xesrves that I dont have with my linux box.
first no raid 5. that's absouluetly maddening. I bought a raid 5 solution from a third party but I'm nervous it wont be effieicnt or it will die someday when I do a self-update that makes it incompatible.
second, and this compounds the above problem is the UFS/HFS+ dichotomy. while macs do run UFS, they dont do it effieicently or with any advanced features like journalling. Moreover the OS and some mac apps wont work unless they are on UFS. so you always have to have a HFS+ partition. but wait! you cant partition a raid disk with different file systems (on apple) so this means if you want to have any hfs raid the whole disk has to be HFS+. on our four disk Xserve this means I ended up with two disks RAID1 HFS+ and and two disks UFS raid 1- a whopping 120GB of UFS out of my 480GB (raw) can be UFS. yuck!. fortunately there is now a partionalble raid 5 soultion from a theird party which fixes this issue. (the reason I wanted UFS, was because even though I lost some effieiceny i wanted no surprises for my linux systems due to the filenaming case sensitivity)
The third problem I have had is that while the admin tools are wonderful and run on remote machines, there are a few tools and apps that will not run remotely. for example, if I want to use the GUI software update remotely, I cant. I have to use the terminal CLI tool. This is not too bad, but its just an example. if you use other gui tools, like brickhouse firewall or whatever, you have to go to the terminal attactched to the machine.
My work around for this is to use OSXVNC which does the job. However there is a catch I dont like. You cant use osxvnc on a headless mac. that is you have to have a display device connected to the mac to use osxvnc!! there's no way I want to have a display for each mac xserve. Of course I could use a KVM switch but my preference would be that it should be unneccessary for remote admin. my work around here is that I can fool the macs by briefly connecting a display to them after boot. I can then unplug the display and OSXVNC will still work on my headless mac.
My conclusion is that apple has a wonderfulhigh quality machine. And it will work perfectly for you if you dont require UFS or remote admin of GUI based apps. When I bought my system I had just had a bad experience with 20 athalon servers that had died from heat delamination of the fans and were unstable due to current glithces from the cd roms. I was thus very risk averse. when I bought the apples I knew I was buying peace of mind, and not paying extra for it. I had no idea what good customer service I was going to get. PLus I did not realize I could also buy a complete replacement part kit (down to the motherboard) to have locally. Since my experience with their customer service I bought the extened warantee. its lot cheaper than a sys admin.
when mac comes out with native raid5 and someone writes a VNC that can run headless all will be well.
p.s. I apologize to the few slashdotters who are outraged when a post is reposted. this review was posted as a sub comment to a sub topic on an earlier artilce today. rightfully it belonged in this thread so I reposted it here.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
does the OX X software in the XSERVE offer and must have capabilities that can't be found in a cheaper Linus implementation?
Well, 640MB ought to be enough for anybody.
Well, I think it's official now; the letter X has been overused. First, we had X11 and all the things named after that, then Window XP and OS X. Now Xserve?
I think we all know where this is headed - it's going to be like the South Park where they say 'shit' 162 times and the Knight of Standards and Practices are going to come and kick us around for overusing the letter. Again, real-like imitates South Park
Njord
The letter X was made to vex - Edward Gorey
a Beowulf cluster of these!
Sorry, I couldn't resist, and besides, you've got to admit such a cluster could potentially be truly badass.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
but they shoulod make a power 4 based xserve for higher end needs.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
ok
if they look at this as a file server
you need to have redundant power supplies no if's not buts
and a hell of a better SMB performace because currently its awful when compared to a netapp and not much better than a PC with samba + other services. also no iSCSI or any software to do a SAN
if they look at this as a Database server
you need to have raw IO so that you can let the DB do the scheduling
the only market wich they can do is the app server they can do Web Objects and all J2EE app servers they lack the ASP angle that SUN have but hey not a major one (-;
I dont see where they aim this
personally I would send them to Wasabi to get hold of some iSCSI stuff and pray that the file server people dont research to much
regards
John Jones
Is it just me, or are there a DB-9 serial ports on the controlers.. I thought Apple considered RS-232 legacy and obsolete?
I work on a ProFibre DF4000 system.. and the serial port is the best way to configure the system. The *gak* windows based in-band management software is crap.
The only other thing I wonder is how 7200RPM ide drives benchmark against my 10kRPM FCAL disks.
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
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
you never guess but I can do that for $399
now if you had a buget and you could spend it all on 1 apple or buy 3 pc's and have load balanceing or plain redunacy what would you do ?
Like, up to 14 I think? Oof. It looks like they hid the ATA/RAID muckety-muck behind (what amounts to) a dedicated-PC-in-a-cabinet like the folks at perifitech do it, so the server doesn't need to know anything about the nature or configuration of the arrays beyond the fiber-channel adapter driver.
This leads me to some questions:
1) Is this a STANDARD fiber-channel SCSI adapter?
2) If so, is there any chance of using this cabinet on an x86 server?
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
In other news, Dell, IBM, Toshiba, and 18 other computer manufacturers have also introduced new models today. For some reason, though, they don't get free advertising on Slashdot.
I don't think so.
According to the 'Tech Specs', typical power consumption is 300 W. Not taking into account any power losses in conversions etc., this means that for 72 hours UPS you'll need 72*300/12=1800 Ah worth of batteries. I don't know what the latest research in batteries have brought us, but I don't think you can fit a total of 1800Ah in batteries in 3u rackspace (and still have room for the 14 disks).
It's obvious that it's only 72 hours of battery backed up cache.
I'm not particularly an Apple lover, but they are putting together a nice suite of workstations, laptops, and servers. The only thing is, what is up with this:
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/specs.html#
(at bottom)
Client licensing fees? WTF?
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
My office just received one of the 1GHz XServes on Friday. This new model is significantly better and $200 cheaper.
I guess that's progress for you, but we can't help but feel screwed over.
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
Chris Giddings President, Ripple LLC
I'm a longtime Mac user who was envious of IDE HD drives for years, then Apple abruptly switched. IRC there are certainly advantage to a SCSI HD, but omitting the on-drive controller saves $$$.
When Apple first promoted SCSI, it was a very novel deal. PC's lagged considerably, esp. when you could get a Mac with serial (Appletalk) and SCSI built-in. Once they had SCSI, I guess was cheaper to string the hard drive into rather than add IDE? I kinda wished they jammed a parallel port and RS-232 in there, too, but that's greedy.
Also, why does IDE not do external devices?
I'll note that SCSI was hardly ideal, esp. in its earliest form. The chain could onlt be very short, and ordering the devices plus termination were a bit of black magic to get it to work. God forbid you pull a cable with the power on. Plus the SCSI cables were *expensive*.
Does anyone else remember "analysts" making fun of Apple for going to USB and Firewire?
journaling! it requires activation, but is there...
Also, why does IDE not do external devices
;)
I don't know all the reasons, but at least one is that the max length for an ide cable is like a foot and a half. Add to that the intervening connectors and I assume that the ide signal is not robust enough to survive such a rugged journey.
God forbid you pull a cable with the power on. Plus the SCSI cables were *expensive*.
Remember that hot pluggable peripherals is a realtively recent thing (at least affordable ones). Back then they were warning you not to unplug your parallel cables while computer/printer was on. And god forbid you unplugged your kb or mouse (this is all on a pc). Your right about the scsi cables, absolutely criminal the cost of those stupid things.
Does anyone else remember "analysts" making fun of Apple for going to USB and Firewire?
Remember, you can always spot the trailblazers, they're the ones with the arrows sticking out their backs
Sorry but you are wrong and original poster was right. Journaling only works on HFS+. not on UFS.
Is this really a cheap solution? I like apple stuff as much as the next obsessive (I can admit it :) but there's no hope in hell I could ever understand the high level above a personal workstation/computer.
To me 2.52TB is like a gigabyte would have been in the mid 80s. Far beyond even thinking about. I'm curious how it really matches to comparable hardware that's already out there, with respect to drive space, redundability(!) and connectivity.
LONDON (Reuters) - One of America's "most wanted" is being hunted in Britain after a film fan recognised his face in the film "Hannibal", police say. The face of James Bulger, who is wanted for 19 murders in the U.S, appeared in the hit film during a scene in which a detective scans a most wanted list on the website of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI (news - web sites)). The film itself follows the hunt for fictional serial killer Dr Hannibal Lecter, an articulate and well-educated cannibal who famously described eating a victim's liver with "fava beans and a fine chianti". London police appealed to the public on Monday for any fresh sightings of former gangland boss Bulger. "Boston FBI agents have been in London this week as part of their continuing work to trace James Bulger, who is one of their ten most wanted," Scotland Yard said in a statement. The film fan recognised Bulger from a previous encounter at the heart of London's West End shopping and theatre district last September. "He then looked up the face on the FBI website and seeing it was Bulger, contacted the FBI in Washington," said Scotland Yard. Bulger's face had stuck in his mind, police said. The fan had met him not just on the street, but also at a nearby gym several years earlier. Further police investigations unearthed Bulger's safety deposit box in London, containing an Irish passport in his name and 35,000 pounds in U.S. dollars, British pounds, French and Swiss francs and Irish punts. Bulger -- like Lecter -- is said to be charming and intelligent with an interest in history, but always carries a knife.
No, no, no, we're from the states. It was a Rabbit in 1981.
Most importantly, it keeps shops in the Apple fold. One argument that people could make is that if they have to go with pc/linux servers, then they might as well go with the desktops too, again to simplify maintenance. This way, Apple ensures that people stay 100% Mac and keep the M$/Linux infiltration at bay.
... indeed, once people see beyond their partisan prejudices it becomes rather apparant the Apple, FreeBSD, and GNU/Linux are allies, promoting consumer choice and competition, and all being threatened by an illegal yet government condoned, convicted monpolist.
... they compete with Win2000 servers, and allow those unable to yet make the leap to free software to at least retain some control of their computing environment, free from the reign and vagaries of a convicted monopolist, and free from the chronic security problems of that same monopolist. This is a smart thing for Apple to do, and something which really shouldn't bother any of the free software or open source advocates all that much.
This is a very good point, though really it is to keep Micro$osft at bay. GNU/Linux is really no threat to Apple at all
Apple is first and foremost a hardware company. If people started moving to GNU/Linux or FreeBSD in droves (perhaps because they become aware of the importance of the freedoms free software grants, or simply because they like the $0 cost), Apple still has the option of simply freeing the source code to their own operating system. While this doesn't jibe with Apple's current strategy, it isn't antithetical to their business model the way it would be for a monopolist like Microsoft (withness Microsoft's current "shared source" anti-free software disinformation campaign. Their only hope is to widely decieve the world's decision makers, a possible but increasingly unlikely proposition).
The Apple servers are important because it allows entities more comfortable purchasing proprietary corporate products over free software solutions the ability to do so without having to contend with the deliberate incompatabilities that Microsoft introduces, and will inevitably introduce again, thereby creating pressure to move to the Microsoft desktop as well. A GNU/Linux or FreeBSD server is no threat to Apple in this regard (both work fine together with Apple desktops, and neither introduces deliberate incompatabilities or attempts to coerce its clients into adopting the same system as their desktop), but there are plenty of old school Apple shops that still haven't grocked free software and its advantages, and would ultimately feel more comfortable paying for a shoddy Win2000 server than a free software or open source equivelent. That this is an ignornant or foolish stance for them to take is not at issue (it is clearly silly, but nevertheless remains all too common), that said shops not be lulled into the Microsoft trap is, at least from Apple's perspective.
These servers don't compete with GNU/Linux and FreeBSD servers all that much IMHO
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Fuck Slashdot, use Kuro5hin. Never mind, we don't want your kind.
"Should Apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 10 calendar days of shipment, you may contact Apple Sales Support at 1-800-676-2775 to request a refund or credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the current selling price. To receive the refund or credit you must contact Apple within 14 business days of shipment."
s alespoli cies.html#Apple%20Prices
from
http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/
-trout
are you saying I'm misinformed here. I dont think so.
Firewire 800 on a server? Why? The only possible use for that I could see would be a cheap[ish] interface to an external drive cluster, but if you can afford an Xserve, why not go scsi? Nevermind that the Xserve RAID is designed to be just that, a large, semi-low priced drive cluster...
Just a little thing I noticed. i thought the xserve was identical, but its cdrom now seems to be a slot loader, rather than a laptop-style-tray as it was before.
:)
small things amuse... etc
I can't believe that Apple has released a revamp to the Xserve and it -still- lacks ECC (SECDED) memory support and hot swappable power supplies. There isn't a self-respecting network administrator worth his salt who would consider buying such hardware for a 24x7 production environment.
:( ]
ESPECIALLY given the cost premium for these units. Look at a Dell 1650 - you can get those with redundant PSU's [and all their memory is ECC/SECDED] starting at around $3500 with that kind of configuration [oh, and of course the drives for that price are already in at least a RAID 1 mirror].
Apple needs _sales_, and to sell it they need hardware which can compete. I don't think anyone can deny that their 15 & 17" Powerbooks will wipe the mat with any x86 laptops out there. But for servers, as much as I would love to buy one of these, until Apple adds some professional grade hardware - there is no way that this will be anything more than a toy & a novelty.
I can almost exuse the lack of redundant PSU's because that's pretty new in the 1U world [though several vendors offer it and those who don't really can't be considered true servers, they're just attractive form factors]. However, lack of ECC in a server is unforgivable.
Just last week I was thinking that unless the Xserve improved those two issues [especially ECC] that they would be gone from the market -very- soon like the iBook. I am surprised to see this revision to say the least. But since they're totally flubbing network admins demands, I doubt we'll see this last much longer than the g4cube [which I also thought was cool
We'll see. I don't see how Apple can support so many product lines, and they're already going to drop the iBook - I really can't imagine they would keep the Xserve with its undoubtedly losing sales figures.
One thing I like I must say is that they've continued to keep the serial console [again here's something that network admins _need_]. But, where the hell is the powerbook with a serial port? USB->DB9 UART's that are Apple branded and ship with the Xserve should be a minimum here.
Just my two cents.
Twirlip, how do we deal with the case insensitivity in UFS. it occasionally happens that a linux package will contain a directory with two files like "HEAD" and head or ReadME and readMe of "configure" and CONFIGURE. if you unpack this on an HFS+ system the files will overwrite each other. How does one escape this in HFS+? it should of course not happen on an all mac network but the xserve is intended to be nfs and smb connected to widows and linux machines who will no know they are on HFS+. Has apple installed some magic fix in the HFS+ system. I asked an apple tech and they said no this was still a problem and suggested UFS.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I write in my journal
...they should consider adding an 802.11g interface to the iRaq. They could call it AirRaid.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
I'm a longtime Mac user who was envious of IDE HD drives for years, then Apple abruptly switched. IRC there are certainly advantage to a SCSI HD, but omitting the on-drive controller saves $$$.
IDE has an on-drive controller just like SCSI - that's why they called it IDE in the first place: Integrated Drive Electronics. Before IDE/ATA, you had to run a separate controller card in an ISA slot that kept track of the allocation of physical (not logical) sectors on the disks and positioned the read/write heads manually. Anyone remember SpinWrite? Norton's Disk Optimizer? LOW LEVEL FORMATS? **shudder**
SCSI implements a much more sophisticated set of command, signaling and contention protocols than IDE, but they both feature a controller integrated into the drive.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Why would I spend from $2800 to $11000 on hardware that I can build myself by buying from Newegg, for about 1/4 to 1/3 the price, have probably 2x to 3x the performance?
Saying it's overpriced is redundant. Saying it's underpowered is redundant.
I am just asking why anyone with more than an Apple Fanboy mentality would ever buy this hardware.
You do?
Funny. I could have sworn Redhat or Debian didn't have per-seat licensing, and in fact Redhat is also commercially supported - they have a long track record in that business.
So, remind me again, why is this a good deal? What possible reason is there to go with an expensive solution that gives you sod all (except integration with Mac clients I guess) that Linux on a cheap Intel box does not?
I'm yet to be convinced people who bought Apple servers unless they have a lot of Apple clients also are doing so more because they think it looks good than any sound technical or financial reasons.
Funny, I've hot plugged keyboards and mice on PC's for years without a problem. I think not being able to hot plug them is a myth that's been perpetrated ever since the original IBM PC had a flakey keyboard controller that could fry if you hot-plugged it. Modern hardware doesn't have this problem.
In any case, SCSI failed simply because of price. Hard drive manufacturers decided to bilk people on SCSI, even back when many IDE and SCSI drives shared drive mechanisms. Remember the Quantum Fireballs? The IDE and SCSI drives were exactly the same, except for the controllerboard. Yes SCSI cost 3x as much.
Drive manufacturers killed SCSI. They are solely to blame.
-Z
Yes, people are using XServes in a production environment. We're running a few of them now as WebObjects application servers, and they are rock solid. We're able to get about 2.7x load out of each of them (when compared to standard G4 servers running OS X and WebObjects), and as Sysadmin, I am delighted to have these machines in our colocation cage. They're reliable, speedy, and a breeze to control remotely via SSH. While they may be noisy (they are, I had one on my desk for testing purposes, and it easily drowned out a fairly loud Sun E450), it isn't really an issue when they're sitting in the colo, serving, as servers are supposed to do.
The most impressive thing, that I foudn, was the LDAP capability. Workgroup Manager is a joke to use, and you can set up share points for NFS, AFP, SMB, and FTP. I bought Impasse for $10 to make managing the firewall easier, and the whole thing is really nice.
We fired up a Redhat workstation, told it to authenticate against the LDAP server, and it just worked. We then NFS mount the home directory share point and we're good to go.
We're migrating over to OS X + Linux workstations, and we're moving our OpenBSD servers to Linux (it's gotten much more secure over the past two years, where our boxes got rooted all the time).
Compared to the issues of getting Samba to play nicely under Linux, this is a dream to adminster. The Xserve is our file+print server, and we use Linux for the production servers. They authenticate against the Xserve, pretty slick.
The only thing that was annoying is that Apple's Netinfo based LDAP bindings weren't standard, so mod_auth_ldap for Apache didn't pick up the groups, but we were able to modify it pretty quickly. As soon as we get ready to package it up, we'll maintain our variant and make it available (email me with questions).
The mail server is a bit week, but AFP548.com's instructions for adding Exim solved that. We now have our virtual hosts working, albeit not as elegantly as I'd like (editting text files). Hopefully OS X Server 10.3 will fix that.
AFP548.com's stunnel help was also great. Now we have everything going over SSL, so we can play inside or outside of the firewall.
The stuff that works works really nicely. It's a GREAT solution for file+print serving, LDAP serving, and mail if you don't need virtual hosts (if you do, pick up Exim from AFP548). The only thing that's annoying is that adding SSL to their IMAP server is really odd, but we stunnel it and we're all set. We even got watchdog (a great program) handling the stunnel server, so on the occaisions that it crashes, it's right back up.
Alex
Only problem is keeping the thing running while constantly swapping out bad IDE drives!
All those are cool, except for the case insensetive nfs server for unix users who _expect_ a case sensetive filesystem.
What happens when I check out a project from cvs that has a directory named 'cvs' in it? That's right, it sucks. The same goes for tarballs with a README and a readme, or configure and CONFIGURE, etc.
If you want to make your macs headless, buy a couple HD15 adapters. The Male HD15-> Female old mac monitor connector is known to work on older models ( the G4 tower style servers that wouldn't boot at all without a monitor ) so it might work for you. Cheap fix too ($2-5 except at comp USA $35!) HD15 Male->Male adapters might work too.
Here's IBMs rackmount servers - it looks like the only 1U they have is powered by a 375MHz 604e. The POWER4 (POWER is an acronym, Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC, all caps :P) rackmounts all look at least 2U; I suspect the massive heat output of a POWER4 makes it impossibe or at least extremely unfeasible to cram into a 1U box. Are there any POWER4 blades or IceCube prototypes, either?
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Does Xserve have hardware RAID 1 onboard? I looked into this 6 months ago and my sales rep said no.
Even my dirt cheapest 1u rackmount Intel servers have RAID 0/1 on board (not software). For more money i'd expect it in Xserve without having to buy a $3500.00 external drive array.
Can anyone clarify this for me?
-ted
After I got a G4 though, I pretty much don't think of a reboot as a part of working on a desktop. If I live it alone for a while, it goes to sleep. When I touch a key, it wakes up instantly. No lockups. Even most software updates install without a reboot.
Is there a fundamental flaw with Intel hardware that causes such an erratic behaviour? In any case, it would suck for a server!
SWEET FANCY MOSES!
You know what I'm talking about. At 3.3 MB/s, that's 2,422 hours of DV capture. That's a lot of The Cartoon Network, my friend.
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
Can you cluster Xserves together? If so, how? If not, I wonder if this is on Apple's to do list? Does Oracle 9i App. Server run on Mac OS X? If so, does the clustering work well for Xserves?
We had Mac OS X before we had Windows XP.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And exactly why would anyone buy this machine rather than build out a x86 box running linux? 1) Because they are pretentiously cool. 2) They are stupid 3) They are rich 4) They are stupid & rich
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
Nope. The Xserve has three expansion slots: two PCIs and a PCI/AGP. One gigabit ethernet card is on the motherboard. The second gigabit ethernet card is on the PCI/AGP slot -- that can be swapped out with an ATi Radeon 8500. As for the two PCI slots, the lower slot has either a PCI video card or, if you've added the Radeon, a SCSI card, and the upper slot can have either a SCSI card or the fibre channel card. So yes, you could have two ethernet cards and a fibre channel card; you just couldn't upgrade the video or add SCSI if you did.
We have moved to such an environment.
Over 30 Mac OS X Server boxes in house, including over 10 Xserves.
Easy maintenance. Easy setup. Fast fast fast Java.
We like 'em.
Fibre Channel Cards for the mac using core chips from Qlogic, JNI, and LSI now exist on Mac.
The best speed and prices seem to be www.AsteraTech.com.
Naturally, you need a mac with 64bit 66Mhx slots like a standard xServe to get that sustained (yes sustained) speed.
But using dual 2 gigabit optical connectors is awesome.
Soon Fibre will be offering 10 gigabit per econd as already demoed at last fall Comdex.
The best part of these cards is that they act like standard SCSI cards and the Astera cards for example run every version of OS 9 3rd party RAID products, and all OS X raid products.
The Astera cards get over 20,400 actual disk block individual requests per second per connector. Thats extremely low latency that SCSI320 does not usually touch. 49 microseconds.
I still like the REALLY big stuff. If you want some storage, and I mean real storage, you gotta use the stuff that LSI makes. LSI Logic Storage Solution Why be limited by 2.8 TB, why not go up to 33TB of max storage, plus you can configure these things in a way, if you get multiple together, you can link their datapower.
Its not what it is, its something else.
But does that apply when they replace a model with a new one, rather than lowering the price of the old one?
There are 2 small problems with using the Xserve as a video editing workstation from a small studio or a school perspective; the extra cost of the unnecessary unlimited OS X Server license and no DVD-R drive. You can buy rack-mounded enclosures to install a DVD-R drive from a third party but of course that adds to the cost.
On the positive side the easy to upgrade storage, rack-mountable enclosure, front access FireWire 400 and solid construction make this a great workstation.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Get an Xserve, fire up OS X Server. Go through the configuration. Compare it to a Linux install. Our jaws kept hitting the floor.
Setup LDAP based authentication and a Directory: 5 minutes.
Graphical tool to add users and groups, complete with email, home directories, etc.
Graphical tool for setting up file shares, with the ability to automatically share them via AFP, SMB, NFS, and FTP.
Ability to configure shitloads of Unix services from a GUI, including Apache (w/ SSL), IMAP, POP3, DNS, FTP, etc., etc.
It has a LOT going for it as a Unix server. And Redhat can authenticate against it at will.
Alex
based on the price and capacity I would be more than willing to present Apple's RAID product as a solution for protected mass storage that would fit into a lower price however I would need some hard evidence on the performance of RAID based on slower IDE hard drives over the performance of comparable RAID solutions that use either SCSI or even FCAL internal hard drives.
SCSI can handle multiple simultaneous I/O requests from multiple applications. SCSI achieves this in part through a process called command-tag queuing. Command-tag queuing means that the SCSI hard disk doesn't have to perform operations in the order they were received (SCSI exhibits asynchronous rather than synchronous I/O). IDE devices can only process one command at a time and the server and application must wait for the command to complete before sending the next command. I'd think having my application waiting more often than it does work is not a "good thing".
How many IDE drives spin >7200 RPM? What IDE drive can come close to SCSI LVD 160's throughput? Even at ATA100 IDE devices aren't going to hit comparable performance levels.
Even the specs on SCSI vs IDE drives are typically better - seek times and performance of SCSI drives are better because they are manufactured to higher tolerences than the mass produced IDE hard drive.
Certainy IDE drives have been getting better however I do not believe that the low price is something I want to look to when the trade-off will be in performance issues and having to answer the questions that will come up later from my boss of why the server/application/database is running so slowly under high load and the reason I will have to present is that "low cost" IDE array we bought is not performing. With an answer like that I would not expect to be "performing" either for any significant time afterwards.
Anybody notice on the management page(http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/management.h tml) you can keep track of the "Keep tabs on the niggly details" What does that mean ?
It seems strange to me that the Xserve would ship with 1.3ghz instead of the newer 1.4ghz. Nayone know why that is?
In the PC world, if you have really important data, you won't buy anything but Compaq servers to store it on -- their hardware just plain works 24/7, and the support is there for the occasional "Oopsie".
The big question for Apple is...
Would you buy one for use in your production eCommerce site? Do you have enough trust in Apple's technology and support offerings to stake your business and your job on the Xserve and Xserve RAID?
Chip H.
In competition for anything above 5-10 users, the licensing costs dwarf the hardware price differences. You betcha the Xserves compete with Windows and not Linux.
Lots of eCommerce sites have gone with Dell PowerEdge for the lowered costs... obviously with mixed results, but I'm not so sure the Compaq-only mantra is as true as it once was.
So arguably, if Dell can get a foothold due to lower costs, why can't Apple? (other than IT managers not trusting that "fruit company")
-Stu
Not everyone needs the absolutely fastest blazing performance possible. The Xserve offers very good performance for it's price range. A 2.5 TB SCSI 160 solution would cost significantly more than 11K.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
I would probably have tried to make different ones. In particular, I still dont see why HFS+ is being preserved. I dont see its advantages and it seems like a legacy that is causing trouble in a unix world. Why not just abandon it and provide some patch (ala the carbon interface) that disguises the underlying file system to the old apps that expect hfs+.
I'm guessing the problem was initially it was a deal killer to get developers to commit to the new OS without it so making it as legacy as possible was a priority. Now this seems like a mistake to me unless HFS+ has some sort of massive advantage over the unix file system. I mean the simple fact that you cant rysch or tar or zip mac files trashes an awful lot of unix ports. while these can be made HFS+ aware its seems like adding patches to the apps rather than fixing the file system is the wrong direction.
now withing the context of a pure mac system you are right that the HFS+ case insensitivity causes very few problems. The trouble happens in a mixed environment. this thread is about raid servers which might very well live in a mixed linux/mac environment (certaintly mac sells them that way). Here the problems are huge. You cant just fix problems at a single point (when you port an app). you have to be constantly aware that untarring any tarball or copying between any two disks could destroy the files being copied.
There are some huge weaknesses in this product. First, the RAID controllers are NOT redundant. Read carefully and you will see that each one is only attached to 7 of the disks. This means you need two hot spares in one shelf, it means that you can't present all the data across one of the FC ports, it means that the failure of either one of the RAID cards means that half of your data becomes unavailable, it means that for RAID 3 or 5 you need two parity drives per shelf, it means that the RAID controllers are not hot pluggable if the host is live, and it means that the write data cache is not mirrored. In short, it has nothing that an active/active RAID controller user would expect to see from redundant controllers. What a blunder!
Two points and a correction.
Point One: ECC only helps with one bit of data damage on the chip, any more than that, you get no help. Considering the extra expense, engineering and slightly degraded performance involved with ECC, Apple made the right decision to go with standard DDR SDRAM.
Point Two: The PSU in the xServe is engineered to carry the typical working load of the server. In fact, the most the server can draw is ?105% of PSU capacity and typically runs at 70%-80%. Compare this with most Intel-based 1U servers, you'll find most of them run at 100% of the PSU rated capacity as a typical load, and can peak at 125%. That extra load really, really shortens PSU lifespan and drives up heat production tremendously. I think the failure rate on the solo PSU on the XServe is going to be low enough to tolerate, and I have the ability to monitor the XServe power supplies (12v and 5v) remotely using the tools built-in to Mac OS X Server if I'm nervous.
Correction: Apple has announced no intention of abandoning the iBook, nor should they anytime soon. It still has a little life left in it. And what do you consider ' -very- soon', the iBook has been around for years?!? Is that flamebait, or do you actually not know that the iBook has been very successful for the last 3 years?
If I had some ham, I'd make a ham sandwich, if I had some bread
if it's not the 'fastest' then what's the point? It may be just "adequate" for the needs when it is installed and may perform well for the few users for whom it was installed for however once more users start using a system with an IDE RAID the performance will slowly sink until you will have to face the inevitable - removing the 'toy' IDE array and replacing it with a serious array based on SCSI or FCAL internal drives.
Your boss who once thought you were a genius for saving the company so much money will now kick your sorry ass off the payroll when you tell him that he has to pay out for a more expensive hardware array and that your IDE 'toy' is doomed to sit on the shelf or get posted on ebay to sell at a loss.
Cheers to you!
By saying it is not as fast as ultra high speed SCSI, I am in no way saying it is slow. The Xserve provides plenty of speed and would not be considered as a "toy" anytime in the near future.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
Correct, ECC only corrects for single bit errors, any more than that and your server will still lockup or reboot itself depending on how it is able to cope with errors.
m pa igns/chipkill.pdf
What you need is Chipkill memory:
ECC Memory
Since server crashes are unacceptable standard ECC memory has been a proven industry standard technology that has had a positive impact on server reliability over the past few years. ECC is able to detect and correct single bit memory errors, which make up the majority of memory errors. ECC can also detect (but not correct) two data bits in error.
Chipkill
Chipkill or Advanced ECC has the ability to correct multi-bit memory errors and by doing so it increases server availability and reliability even further.
If a correctable error is discovered, the data is automatically corrected before it is sent out. At the same time, the error is recorded and reported to the Bios or firmware.
Software management tools, which are often included with servers, monitor errors and issue reports accordingly.
What servers use Chipkill?
At the moment IBM, Dell and Fujitsu use this new technology on some of their servers.
See whitepaper from IBM re: chipkill memory:
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/ca
Yes, you can build with these inexpensive Apple servers but if you can't rely on them your clients can't rely on you and you may as well just go home.
Really?
The last company I worked for used HP PC boxes. Though this is most likely to match their HPUX boxes.
They never had a problem with the hardware beyond a failed HDD, which was replaced the same day, and the hardware RAID re-synced flawlessly.
On the other hand my current company has a lot of older Compaq servers running Novell, and they've had nothing but problems with them.
Every manufacturer have their ups and downs, our datacenter atm has Dell, IBM, HP, Compaq and even Acer PC servers among other equipment.
"that Linux on a cheap Intel box does not?"
You obviously have never worked on a rackmount before if you think that a "cheap Intel box" is even in the same league as these things.
As another poster pointed out, *you* may want to run your critical business software off of a cheap intel box, but personally I prefer using a slightly higher quality server.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Bought this:
http://www.storageflex.com/lite8000i.htm
8 100 gig ATA100 drives to Ultra160 SCSI.
Performance sucked ass under load...
replaced with a Sun A5200 array with FCAL drives like we should have bought. All are happy now.
IDE array looks great on shelf - no longer used. Your IDE RAID can also look great on the shelf. Hell, this one'll look right pretty.
Why didn't they bother to throw SGI into the mix?
http://www.sgi.com/products/storage/
Despite all the inroads linux makes.. it's often still easier to sell people on a big, established brand name than it is on linux or bsd.
Sorry, but that's the truth.
ANd as for the "expensive" part. it should be obvious by now:one-time hardware & software costs are almost never the issue when it comes to deciding what to go with.
Two Words: Web Objects. You stupid, cocksucking, dumb motherfucker. Does WebObjects run on your dirty socialist Linux? That's right, it doesn't. But I suppose we should switch to a "robust" solution like PHP and MySQL. After all, what possible performance gain could be had from using a non-flat-file database format.
/*- Mohammed -*/
I forgot two things: 1) to taunt you into modding me down, and 2) to end my comment with ", bitch." Now mod me down, bitch.
/*- Mohammed -*/
Several posts are indicating that this is a good deal because it's so cheap for the space.
You can build a terabyte of raid5 for under $3000 nowadays.
12 x 120gig, 7200rpm drives: $1440
12 port 3Ware escalade raid controller: $800
Big case, power supply, and
64 bit PCI motherboard: $1200
That's cheap.
I see that the xServe and xServe RAID have a high cost to purchase additional drives. Is it possible to put your own standard IDE drives in the expansion bays or are these drives special (due to hot-swapablity maybe)?
$500 per each 180GB IDE drive is a little rough on the wallet for a guy that just wants to set up a badass home network/file/web server.
thanks, matt
You are my new hero.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Remember using utilities to set your disk interleave for maximum performance? :)
fabulous. Apple finally discovered that Servers should have RAID controllers. Maybe next they will figure out something else that should be blatently obvious to anyone who actaully works on servers.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
*wipes tear from eye*
That was beautiful.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Your right about the scsi cables, absolutely criminal the cost of those stupid things.
Criminal? How about "necessary to ensure survival of the signal during its rugged journey over ~2 m and 7 devices"?
They're shielded cables, of course they're going to be more expensive than an IDE ribbon.
fails on this point also - no jornalling means less protection - better to use a Linux box with EXT3, JFS, Reiser, or XFS...
Can't imagine Mac handling large numbers of files and directories... HFS+ chokes on large drives and directories with many files.
Redundancy (power, cooling, controller), small form factor, management software, speed, etc.
there _is_ a journaled filesystem in MacOS X I'm using it right now
They're shielded cables, of course they're going to be more expensive than an IDE ribbon.
;)
That's not what we're comparing it to. Back in the mid 80's a 3ft scsi cable could easily cost >$100 depending on manufacturer. Now that's outrageous, shielded or not. Then again ethernet adaptors were over $1000, so I guess everything was expensive back then
The Apple Xserve RAID talks CAM over Fibre Channel... CAM as in the SCSI command protocol, the same one you are spouting about. Get this through your head - each ATA drive in Apple's solution has its own channel to the drive controller - there is no need for overlapping I/O from the RAID controller to the drive, and command tag queuing just won't buy you that much. It is the job of the RAID controller to process the SCSI commands and feed them to the ATA drives. You aggregate enough drives, and you can saturate an Ultra 160 SCSI bus. Plus, on an Ultra 160 SCSI bus, you have bus arbitration overhead which gets worse as you increase the number of drives on the same bus. Let's say each SCSI drive can handle 55mb/sec throughput. That's 3 drives and you saturate an Ultra160 bus, and you won't really get 160mb/sec because of arbitration overhead. Let's say each ATA drive can do 40mb/sec - 5 of these drives and you're hitting 200mb/sec, the speed of a single 2gb fibre link. I don't think throughput is an issue here given enough drives. It's really the speed and efficiency of the RAID controller. Plus, the RAID controller has 128mb of cache on board, expandable to 512mb. Small read/writes will probably be a factor, but much of that will be hidden in the RAID machinery anyways.
The issues are reliability and value. Reliability wise, the SCSI and FC drives should be much better, but at significantly higher cost. The point of RAID is to protect you from the inevitability of drive failure. So you replace the drives more often, but at much lower cost. I think most people can deal with that trade off at this price point. Plus, from a value perspective, not only are the drives cheaper/meg, but the overall electricity cost is lower too for both powering the array and cooling the room.
No that blurb was there before - and I seem to recall there was some type of promotional offer targetted at video pros. They offered better video cards as BTO options for those using it as a digital video workstation.
Case sensitivity is a UNIX thing, not a linux thing.
PHP is the solution of choice for relaying mysql errors to web users.
I have to admit, I came in my pants reading that one. More of the same please, Mr Syal.
Um macs are bsd unix and are not case sensitive. thus it cant be a unix thing. it is dependent on the file system.
Point One: ECC only helps with one bit of data damage on the chip, any more than that, you get no help. Considering the extra expense, engineering and slightly degraded performance involved with ECC, Apple made the right decision to go with standard DDR SDRAM.
Do your statistics first. You make it sound like ECC helps for 50% of the cases, but not the other 50%.
A random bit error (mainly due to cosmic radiation) happens about every 3-4 months in a normal system. ECC will correct this.
The only thing ECC will not be able to correct is two bits *SIMULTANEOUSLY* going wrong during one clock cycle in exactly the same byte of memory. Go ahead and calculate the probability, but it is so low that it is non-existent.
There are more advanced types of error-correcting memory, but those are more indended to protect you from hardware errors in the memory itself.
The real reason is that the Apple chipset cannot handle ECC, so they didn't have a choice.
I think the failure rate on the solo PSU on the XServe is going to be low enough to tolerate
Well, there are essentially only two types of environments: those where it is acceptable to have hardware failures and those where it isn't. The Xserve clearly isn't intended for the latter.
Chipkill does a lot more than just correct bit error, it can deal with the complete failure of one dram module on the dimm. Basically it is raid5+ecc for ram. I expect anyone who wants to compete in anything but the bottom of the server heap will be shipping chipkill in the next couple of years.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I know everyone here goes oowww over the mac hardware, but seriously, there are heaps of solutions, that are just like this and have been out for ages, and are cheaper. Take the Jetstor III IDe raid for example - http://www.jetstor.com/02_01_jetstor_iii_ide.html
14 Drives, up to 250gig per drive atm, you can get it configured with 1.1tb for around $5000AUD, it has redundent power supplies etc.. and with the right controller can support these os's
Windows NT, Windows 2000 and MSCS (Microsoft Cluster Server), Sun/Solaris, Linux, SCO Unix, HP/UX, IBM AIX, SGI IRIX, DEC VMS, MAC OS, FreeBSD, Novell, OS/2.
All Apple have done is taken what heaps of other companies are offering, packaged it into a lovely looking case, and charged a whole lot more for it - and boasted big time about it ( Which they seem to do all the time, especially there supercomputer jibberish they go on about ). Mac Hardware is great, but it aint the be all and end all.
Dr. Bott's gHEAD may be an answer to one of your problems:l
http://www.drbottkg.com/prod/ghead.htm