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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."
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.
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.
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.
First off, you're using an outdated OS on the machine.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.
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
Well if you're refering to the general switch from scsi to ide, then not really. Apple adopted scsi wwwwaaay back before ide even existed. Back then there was scsi or mfm/rll. And mfm/rll only offered internal hard drive storage, no scanners, no external drives. So the original adoption of scsi made complete sense back then. Apples continued use of scsi made sense for almost exactly the same reasons. Many people had things like scanners and external hd's (dtp, video, etc), so a move to ide wouldn't have made sense even if it would have resulted in a somewhat cheaper disk subsystem, since they'd most likely would have to have shipped scsi anyway.
Now fast forward, things like usb and firewire take care of things like scanners and other higher speed peripherals, the the internal disk bus can be just that. So all of a sudden ide makes sense. And then in terms of performance, ide has definitely caught up and it would be hard to make an argument for scsi from a strictly price/performance standpoint.
So, while a curiousity, it not all that ironic, just a sign of the times.
"IDE doesn't cut it"
Tell that to Google.
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
Apple has a 10-day return policy. You can return it and order a new one or keep this one and get a credit for the difference. Call the Apple store and talk with them about it.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
...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