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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."
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.
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?
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.
Well from the spec's its got hot swapable redunant power supplies, hot swapable redundant cooling subsystem, hot swapable redundant RAID controllers, hot swapable RAID cache battery backup (72 hours), and supports fibre channel output, through a well priced card. Saying IDE doesn't cut it is a bit of a generalisation.
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.
...on the Xerve RAID. Good to see Apple continues to include such essentials.
"Not particularly impressive."
Just like your reading ability....
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
First off, you're using an outdated OS on the machine. No multitasking, that's why your machine is crawling. Secondly, you offer no specifics on hard drive speeds or bus speeds so I can't help you there. Next, pitting NT against anything that Apple did before OS X is a losing battle for Apple. If you want to see a really impressive dual, put a new Apple G4 tower against a newer PC. i do it at work, on my desk a dual 1Ghz g4 tower versus a Dell 2.2 Ghz. Both with 1.5 gigs of ram. The Mac outperforms it consistently. What you really need to do is update your hardware or stop using Macs if they bother you so much.
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.
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
Yep. Each set of 7 drives has a RAID controller.
The price/performance actually isn't that bad. I've spec'ed out 1U servers, xServes and dual athlon/dual Xeon boxes. After you trick out the x86 boxes, you are pretty much in the same ballpark. :-)
Granted, you'll get faster processors on the x86 boxes... but Altivec runs encryption rather nice so your SSL routines will run fast on the G4 server.
I think it's really a well priced product, considering the type of performance you actually get out of it.
It's just too bad they didn't get an up to date CPU from Motorola. I was REALLY hoping that Moto would have delivered a PPC 7457 with 512K L2 cache... and possibly DDR FSB support... but you can never over-estimate MOTO
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
"IDE doesn't cut it"
Tell that to Google.
Both ATA100 and ATA133 devices will work. As far as I know the ATA133 devices are backwards compatible with ATA100 controllers (this is the case on my PC at home) they just operate as if they were ATA100 devices.
Chris
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)
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
And easy to set up and use. And there you have probably the #1 reason to buy an Xserve.
You are not making sense to me. The RAID is the 2.52TB (2.16 with RAID 5), with redundant power supplies. It has two fibre channels. And each of the 14 drives has it's own IDE bus. Try packing 14 IDE busses with hardware RAID (0,1,3,5,0+1,10,30,50), two fibre channels, redundant cooling, front panel monitoring out the wazoo, 72-hour battery backup for the RAID controllers (albeit at an additional cost) and plenty more in a 3U box.
Replacing the Xserve with commodity hardware wouldn't be too hard (hell, replace the Xserve with a PowerMac - almost the same thing, only cheaper) but replacing the Xserver RAID would be.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
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.
This was only three years ago. HD size and other avances have done wonders for size of storage and heat/cooling requirements.
IDE drives on seperate controllers is a great way to get troughput comparible to SCSI systems. I beleive that there is work on getting command tag queueing available in the Linux IDE code (it may already be there). I imagine this could be avaiable in OSX shortly if not now. The need for SCSI is becoming less and less as IDE capabilities grow.
Very cool indeed.
Mecworks BLOG
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.
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.
;)
Well if previous Apple server sales (pre xserve) are any indication, nobody is
But seriously, these boxes are for Mac shops. It provides them with a "real" server platform, but one that uses an os that is common with their desktop machines, making maintenance muuuuch simpler. Plus if the servers are easier to maintain in general, then you have a potentially huge savings from that fact alone. After all, how many places need raw cpu power, some obviously do, but I would guess that the majority have other issues that are more critical to them. This is a no brainer for people who are simply using the things as file servers, as the specs are more than adequate for that. I don't think people are looking at these things (or Apple positioning them) as massive compute servers to run their TB Oracle database servers on.
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.
Hey if you want to run you enterprise on some junky $399 WalMart PC go ahead. Let me know how that works out for you. When I buy something for work I make sure it's fully supported by a major vendor.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
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.
Look at the specs again. It has redundant power supplies. The IO speeds on the xServe RAID are AMAZING.
No - both drives and controllers are backwards compatible. They simply will run at the lowest speed of the two (controller, drive).
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?
If you read more thoroughly, you would have seen this right next to it:
Mac OS X Server is available in 10-client and unlimited-client editions to meet the needs of server deployments of any size. License restrictions apply only to simultaneous Mac file sharing services.
Notice the "Mac file sharing" bit at the end. I would imagine that few people are doing AppleShare serving with this. SMB and NFS is probably much more likely candidates for this box.
Bill Hayden
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
No biggy, they've had this for a while. There's 2 slightly differnt versions of OS X server software. The cheaper one ($499) limits you to 10 concurent file sharing connections (I think just for afp, but might be samba also), which includes a limit of 10 users connected atthe same time for thier home directories. The other version ($999) doesn't have these limits. The version that comes with all their hardware is the full one. The light one is for if you want this running on an iMac, or an older server, or to retrofit one of your towers.
Mod point free since 2001
IDE doesn't cut it (IMAO) in the real world, no matter whose badge is on the front of it.
Behind a RAID controller, IDE drives cut it quite nicely in the real world. What's important is the host interface, and the number of spindles behind the controller. This RAID will do just fine.
I write in my journal
Most importantly, it keeps shops in the Apple fold. One argument that people could make is that if they have to go with pc/linux servers, then they might as well go with the desktops too, again to simplify maintenance. This way, Apple ensures that people stay 100% Mac and keep the M$/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
"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
Is this really a cheap solution?
Yes.
Just a few months ago, last summer I think it was, I was looking for inexpensive RAID solutions that included Fibre Channel to the host and IDE on the back end. Performance wasn't an issue for us; capacity was, and reliability was somewhere in the middle of the importance stack. (Our customers were willing to accept occasional down-time, but were very price-sensitive.)
I found a system from a company called Chapparal-- I have no idea if I spelled that right. This system used IDE drives, bridged inside the box to SCSI, which was in turn bridged outside the box to Fibre Channel. Performance sucked ass, and it didn't have redundant anything, but the price was right: $10,000 a TB.
Now, just six months later, Apple-- a company known for higher-than-average prices-- is selling a technically superior and much better built box with twice the storage for roughly the same price.
While I wouldn't classify this as a cheap solution-- it's too well built and has too many features to be called "cheap"-- it's definitely a good deal.
I write in my journal
you never guess but I can do that for $399
Do you get paid in grocery store coupons or something?
You can haul gravel all day in a Toyota pickup truck too, but I don't recommend it if you're depending on doing it for a living.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
There seems to be some confusion about the CPU performance for the Xserve. The fastest processor Dell offers for a 1U is a 1.4 Ghz PIII in the 1650... Yes, of course, you can get a second processor for cheaper, but 2 1.4 GHz Pentium III do not equal 2 1.33 Ghz G4s. The G4s are more like a hypothetical 2.0 Ghz Pentium III. This is the advantage of the G4; in general, it is more efficient (performance/power/Mhz). It's no accident that Apple only offers a 1U. It's the only server market segment that they can compete in. A 2U offering from Apple would not cut it on price/performance.
Also the FSB of the Dell box is only 133 Mhz where as the Xserve is 167 Mhz. Yes, it's true there is not real DDR support, but, on the whole, I'd say you're definitely not going to be hurting on performance if you get an Xserve.
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
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.
Report this as a bug to the maintainer of the package - if they're at all interested in supporting Mac OS X as a Unix platform, they will have to remove the dependency on a case-sensitive volume format (aside from some ex-NeXT users, and fanboys who don't know any better, the Mac volume format is HFS+).
If you have to use some software which requires UFS, the best workaround is to create a large enough UFS disk image and install onto that - saves having to dedicate a whole partition to UFS, and handy for dumping onto DVD if you want to move the "UFS world" to another machine.
Nae bother
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
You have a point with ECC to a certain extent, but the PSU is a non-issue. Dell is the only Tier 1 vendor that supplies a back-up PSU, and it's jury-rigged at that... It's not standard issue. Why not take the Xserve to task for the lack of redundant cooling as well? The 1650 has it... By the very fact that the Xserve does not have redundant PSUs or cooling, it is aimed at a different market segment than the one that requires absolute 100% up time, and therefore ECC is not that much of an issue. The single cosmic ray that switches a single bit during a year is not going to matter much to the market the Xserve is aimed at. The 1U market is based on price, including space, and performance, not on reliability. Obviously, it can't be a piece of crap, but... I'm sure if Apple made a 2U unit they would include redundant everything, but then they also would need to come up with a processor that can compete with the Xeons in 2u units. Maybe when the 970 comes out, but not now... Anyhow, why is it that everyone assumes the people at Apple are stupid? They have done a fine job at finding the right balance for the right market segment. Obviously, if you NEED ECC or redundancy, don't buy an Xserve. It's pretty simple... Although I can understand your disappointment over not being able to buy one because you do need those things... ;-)
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
I think Freud called it "projection."
Or perhaps they're in a 100% Windows shop and can't afford the cost of 50 client licenses? Apple's much easier than linux and much cheaper than windows. There's a market for that segment. These servers hit it quite well.
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 -*/
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.