Apple Updates Xserve to Nehalem Processors [Archive]

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MacRumors

Apr 7, 2009, 08:39 AM

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/04/07/apple-updates-xserve-to-nehalem-processors/)

http://images.macrumors.com/article/2009/04/07/083850-quad-core-intel-nehalem.jpg_425.jpg

As rumored, Apple has updated its Xserve line of servers to the latest Intel Nehalem processors. Apple claims the new Xserves deliver up to twice the performance of the previous system. Using Intel "Nehalem" Xeon processors and a next generation system architecture, the 1U rack-optimized Xserve delivers up to an 89 percent improvement in performance per watt. Xserve is available with up to two 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon processors and industry-leading storage options that include a low-power solid state drive (SSD) and up to 3TB of internal storage. Starting at $2,999, Xserve includes an unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard.
The new Xserve is available immediately from the Apple Store (http://store.apple.com/). The standard $2,999 configuration includes a 2.26GHZ Quad-Core Xeon 5500 processor and build to order options include dual 2.26 GHz, 2.66 GHz or 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon processors.

Article Link: Apple Updates Xserve to Nehalem Processors (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/04/07/apple-updates-xserve-to-nehalem-processors/)

Grimace

Apr 7, 2009, 08:40 AM

Just placed my order for an Octo-Serve! :)

Thanks Apple!

justflie

Apr 7, 2009, 08:41 AM

D'oh. I just submitted this to you. Haha. Oh boy, there's that "performance per watt" metric again. :rolleyes: As engineer, that melts my brain on many levels. :D

vendettabass

Apr 7, 2009, 08:41 AM

Just placed my order for an Octo-Serve! :)

Thanks Apple!

what you using it for?

edesignuk

Apr 7, 2009, 08:42 AM

It boggles the mind that on a rather expensive server the RAID card is a $700 option, and that other than the SSD (who uses SSD's in servers?) the only other disk option is SATA. Where is SAS?

Awesome-o/

Apr 7, 2009, 08:42 AM

about time

darrenscerri

Apr 7, 2009, 08:42 AM

Haha new Nehalem Xserves! The GPU is a GT 120.

No more SAS option? There are only the S-ATA drives as options. Btw for those who are wondering a quick search in google, "ADM" means Apple Drive Modules.

Evangelion

Apr 7, 2009, 08:45 AM

It boggles the mind that on a rather expensive server the RAID card is a $700 option, and that other than the SSD (who uses SSD's in servers?) the only other disk option is SATA. Where is SAS?

I think the SSD makes quite a bit of sense. It doesn't eat a drive-bay and it has ultra-fast seek-times. There are quite a bit of uses for SSD in server-use IMO.

amac4me

Apr 7, 2009, 08:47 AM

I think the SSD makes quite a bit of sense. It doesn't eat a drive-bay and it has ultra-fast seek-times. There are quite a bit of uses for SSD in server-use IMO.

I think you're right and we'll see the adoption of SSD across more servers (and vendors) moving forward.

edesignuk

Apr 7, 2009, 08:47 AM

I think the SSD makes quite a bit of sense. It doesn't eat a drive-bay and it has ultra-fast seek-times. There are quite a bit of uses for SSD in server-use IMO.Perhaps in certain cases it might, though I'd still say that would be rather specialised. I stand by the rest of my statement though!

Airforcekid

Apr 7, 2009, 08:49 AM

I noticed if you went under mac it was updated mins before the store opened!

Babybandit

Apr 7, 2009, 08:52 AM

Ordered 2 at 2.93 Octa Core. Going to swap the Ram and Harddrives later on.

Might pinch down for 2 more to swap out more of the school's old server. :)

But definitely going to see how well they run first.

themoonisdown09

Apr 7, 2009, 08:52 AM

It boggles the mind that on a rather expensive server the RAID card is a $700 option, and that other than the SSD (who uses SSD's in servers?) the only other disk option is SATA. Where is SAS?

I believe the SSD is meant for the operating system.

Solid-state drive option.
Xserve supports a 128GB Solid State Drive (SSD) that doesn’t take up a valuable drive bay. When added, it comes configured as your boot drive.

edesignuk

Apr 7, 2009, 08:54 AM

I believe the SSD is meant for the operating system.Yeah I know. Still seems like an odd choice when the drive bays are all stuck with plain old SATA.

Shivetya

Apr 7, 2009, 08:56 AM

is the zero percent financing new?

Cabbit

Apr 7, 2009, 08:57 AM

"Three independent hot-plug drive bays with support for SATA or SAS Apple Drive Modules."

Note the Xserve raid card is a SAS Raid card just not clearly advertised.

Sehnsucht

Apr 7, 2009, 08:58 AM

Now if my school would just order a rack of these bitches, I'd have no problem with it at all! :cool:

Haha new Nehalem Xserves! The GPU is a GT 120.

Better than the previous Xserve's integrated 64MB ATI chip. :D

But I always figured that you could throw a Mac Pro-compatible graphics card in one of these things, since the Xserve is basically a "squished" Mac Pro, right? Or is there even any physical room for a full-sized graphics card? :confused:

Schizoid

Apr 7, 2009, 09:01 AM

Yeah I know. Still seems like an odd choice when the drive bays are all stuck with plain old SATA.

Much better than the old standard 80Gb boot drive, although I would want an SSD boot drive, and 3 x 1TB RAID 5.... oh dear £4000..... ungh

Joe The Dragon

Apr 7, 2009, 09:01 AM

"Three independent hot-plug drive bays with support for SATA or SAS Apple Drive Modules."

Note the Xserve raid card is a SAS Raid card just not clearly advertised.

3gb of ram in a $3000 system?

for $500 more then the mac pro they can at least put 6gb in there.

edesignuk

Apr 7, 2009, 09:01 AM

"Three independent hot-plug drive bays with support for SATA or SAS Apple Drive Modules."

Note the Xserve raid card is a SAS Raid card just not clearly advertised.ah huh! OK. Still crappy that in a server they charge you $700 to have RAID capability (hello! it's a server!). At least it brings SAS with it though.

Can't help but think if you pick up an HP Proliant DL you'll get all this and more as standard.

fleshman03

Apr 7, 2009, 09:02 AM

But I always figured that you could throw a Mac Pro-compatible graphics card in one of these things, since the Xserve is basically a "squished" Mac Pro, right? Or is there even any physical room for a full-sized graphics card? :confused:

You know, I've always had this weird dream of having one of those screwed into the bottom of a desk and used as a "workstation" computer.

Weird thought, huh?

I'd venture that it could offer better power consumption and heat distribution than a MacPro, but I'd be talking right out of my ass w/o actually knowing if that's the case.

Cromulent

Apr 7, 2009, 09:03 AM

Yeah I know. Still seems like an odd choice when the drive bays are all stuck with plain old SATA.

Nah, you can stick SAS drives in them. Apple just does not offer them as a BTO option.

Edit: Darn just checked out the config I would buy if I had the cash and it came to £19k roughly. Little bit more saving left to do me thinks :).

brisbaneguy29

Apr 7, 2009, 09:03 AM

I believe if you read the specs SAS is indeed an option,

"Flexible drive options.
Xserve 1TB Serial ATA (SATA) Apple Drive Modules pack up to 3TB in a 1U form factor. Rated 24/7 for server-class reliability and performance, these drives are an outstanding dollar-per-gigabyte value. Or add 15,000-rpm Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drive modules and enjoy the highest disk performance available today. SAS drives deliver higher sequential performance (up to 163MB/s2), outstanding random-access performance, and best-in-class mean time between failure (MTBF) ratings for the most demanding applications."

edesignuk

Apr 7, 2009, 09:04 AM

Nah, you can stick SAS drives in them. Apple just does not offer them as BTO option.Intelligent, that :rolleyes:

Don.Key

Apr 7, 2009, 09:05 AM

You know, I've always had this weird dream of having one of those screwed into the bottom of a desk and used as a "workstation" computer.

It's a great idea... If you are deaf.

Schizoid

Apr 7, 2009, 09:07 AM

ah huh! OK. Still crappy that in a server they charge you $700 to have RAID capability (hello! it's a server!). At least it brings SAS with it though.

Can't help but think if you pick up an HP Proliant DL you'll get all this and more as standard.

Was looking in to this for both HP and Dell, Apple are quite competitive, when most Windows servers come without things like operating systems and hard drives! Devil's in the detail as they say...

Cromulent

Apr 7, 2009, 09:10 AM

Was looking in to this for both HP and Dell, Apple are quite competitive, when most Windows servers come without things like operating systems and hard drives! Devil's in the detail as they say...

Especially as you get an unlimited client version of OS X Server for it. Try buying an unlimited client version of Windows Server (I know you can't) and see how much that costs you...

Nik

Apr 7, 2009, 09:11 AM

It's interesting that the XServe (Octa) has 12 memory slots while the MacPro only has 8...

Sehnsucht

Apr 7, 2009, 09:13 AM

You know, I've always had this weird dream of having one of those screwed into the bottom of a desk and used as a "workstation" computer.

Weird thought, huh?

I'd venture that it could offer better power consumption and heat distribution than a MacPro, but I'd be talking right out of my ass w/o actually knowing if that's the case.

I actually started a thread here awhile back asking if the Xserve could be used as a regular Mac Pro (provided my desk was big enough.) You know, with a cinema display sitting on top. MR's knowledgable Xserve users pointed out how LOUD they are...(I never got to mess around with one until a few weeks ago so I didn't know.) And yeah, even one lone Xserve puts out a fair amount of racket in a quiet room.

The dream I've been having involves a cluster of Mac Pros and a huge, multi-room Xserve farm. :D :D Apple really needs to make a 4U Xserve and reintroduce an Apple RAID. :D

Cromulent

Apr 7, 2009, 09:13 AM

It's interesting that the XServe (Octa) has 12 memory slots while the MacPro only has 8...

And the 24GB memory upgrade is only about £800. Pretty cheap for Apple.

edesignuk

Apr 7, 2009, 09:13 AM

electronboy

Apr 7, 2009, 09:14 AM

This is great news. I am very encouraged to see that Apple has maintained a strong commitment to the Xserve. My business depends on them. Not a Windows server in the house!

dlewis23

Apr 7, 2009, 09:16 AM

It's interesting that the XServe (Octa) has 12 memory slots while the MacPro only has 8...

I think they have a little more room in a 1U then the Mac Pro Chassis so they can fit those 2 extra dimms.

Looks like a pretty nice server, now I just need something to stick on it first before I drop $3000 on a server.

Grimace

Apr 7, 2009, 09:19 AM

To go along with my new XServe, I'm ordering a NEW DroboPro rackmount 8-bay enclosure!! (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=7422049)

MrCrowbar

Apr 7, 2009, 09:20 AM

I believe the SSD is meant for the operating system.

For the average user yes. But webservers for instance need to cache a lot of data. And you can only put so much RAM into a server so there's a lot of swapping (putting the data from RAM to the hard drives) going on, to manage all the temporary data for all the users accessing the web browser. Hard drives for this purpose are usually faster (1500 rpm is pretty standard) but smaller (necessary to keep them fast yet reliable and affordable) than your average consumer drive. So SSDs can really shine here, they're using way less power and don't require as much cooling as 1500rpm hard drives which can mean significant saving on a server rooms power consumption (server power and cooling power). I believe SSD are still a bit slow in terms of write-speeds though so they might still be a disadvantage in some applications.

eastcoastsurfer

Apr 7, 2009, 09:20 AM

I'll definitely give them that. Licensing costs for OS X server are unbelievably generous. Microsoft's are through the roof!

Depends on how large your company is. MS is very aggressive in their volume licensing deals.

Cromulent

Apr 7, 2009, 09:22 AM

To go along with my new XServe, I'm ordering a NEW DroboPro rackmount 8-bay enclosure!! (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=7422049)

It is just a shame that drive enclosure does not use a fibre optic connection. I think it will be hard (if not impossible) to utilise the speed advantage of an 8 drive RAID array over GigE or Firewire 800.

fleshman03

Apr 7, 2009, 09:24 AM

I actually started a thread here awhile back asking if the Xserve could be used as a regular Mac Pro (provided my desk was big enough.) You know, with a cinema display sitting on top. MR's knowledgable Xserve users pointed out how LOUD they are...(I never got to mess around with one until a few weeks ago so I didn't know.) And yeah, even one lone Xserve puts out a fair amount of racket in a quiet room.

The dream I've been having involves a cluster of Mac Pros and a huge, multi-room Xserve farm. :D :D Apple really needs to make a 4U Xserve and reintroduce an Apple RAID. :D

Hey - we all have dreams, right?

At least now I don't feel so naive. Though, it did seem like a cool idea. Maybe there is something to the form factor for a desktop. If it was quite enough, and under-desk mounted, it could really work. Minimalist and out of sight, yet as functional as a MacPro...

Cromulent

Apr 7, 2009, 09:26 AM

Depends on how large your company is. MS is very aggressive in their volume licensing deals.

Aggressive enough to give a company an unlimited client license for £616? That is the price of OS X Server.

eastcoastsurfer

Apr 7, 2009, 09:29 AM

For the average user yes. But webservers for instance need to cache a lot of data. And you can only put so much RAM into a server so there's a lot of swapping (putting the data from RAM to the hard drives) going on, to manage all the temporary data for all the users accessing the web browser.

What are you talking about? If you have web servers doing a lot of swapping you need to add more RAM or you need to distribute your servers.

The real place where swapping can become an issue is on the database servers. I'm busy moving over an application now to a new machine that has 64GB of RAM in it.

eastcoastsurfer

Apr 7, 2009, 09:36 AM

Aggressive enough to give a company an unlimited client license for £616? That is the price of OS X Server.

No, but you have to factor in 'switching' costs. Sure 616 is cheap for the server licensing, but then how much does it costs to move all your development from MSSQL to something else? All of our .net projects to something else? How about true hardware costs? We used to have volume deals with dell and now with HP. There are a lot more costs involved in the TCO than just the up front cost of licensing.

That's the situation many companies are in. I've done the math every time we replace or buy new server(s) to see if it adds up to switch. And truthfully, to me switching from Windows to OSX on the server side does not make any sense. If you're going to switch you make the switch to Linux (or BSD). That way you can still use any hardware you want and get the cheap licensing. Keep in mind I'm only talking about servers and not user desktops.

Schizoid

Apr 7, 2009, 09:44 AM

Outsider

Apr 7, 2009, 09:45 AM

Something doesn't add up. 12 DIMM slots. Their tech page states "System supports up to 32GB in Mac OS X Server v10.5". 12 x 4Gb is 48GB. Either they made a typo or Leopard has a 32GB limit. I'm confident that Snow Leopard will address this but this makes for unusual memory placement. Perhaps with Sneopard we'll see this limit be raised to 96GB and the Mac pro limit accordingly (64GB).

AidenShaw

Apr 7, 2009, 09:47 AM

Cromulent

Apr 7, 2009, 09:49 AM

No, but you have to factor in 'switching' costs. Sure 616 is cheap for the server licensing, but then how much does it costs to move all your development from MSSQL to something else? All of our .net projects to something else? How about true hardware costs? We used to have volume deals with dell and now with HP. There are a lot more costs involved in the TCO than just the up front cost of licensing.

That's the situation many companies are in. I've done the math every time we replace or buy new server(s) to see if it adds up to switch. And truthfully, to me switching from Windows to OSX on the server side does not make any sense. If you're going to switch you make the switch to Linux (or BSD). That way you can still use any hardware you want and get the cheap licensing. Keep in mind I'm only talking about servers and not user desktops.

True I don't disagree I was just making the point that Apple are pretty competitive in the server world.

Porting software is always going to be a problem, but when you take into account the long term saving and access to open technology such as PostgreSQL or MySQL and the associated licensing savings there as well it does make sense over say a 5 year transition period.

But as you say, you would probably be better off moving to Solaris, OpenBSD or FreeBSD if you were making the full switch to Unix.

Fjan

Apr 7, 2009, 09:52 AM

Cabbit

Apr 7, 2009, 10:00 AM

3gb of ram in a $3000 system?

for $500 more then the mac pro they can at least put 6gb in there.

Emm what the heck is the amount of RAM to do with it supporting SAS. Totally contextless to quote my statement of SAS support as having anything what so ever to do with the amount of RAM or anything else as my comment only covered SAS support.

diamond.g

Apr 7, 2009, 10:01 AM

No VGA and no DVI unless you get an adapter. Every server room I've ever been to has a spare LCD lying around for quick local maintenance. Now you would need to carry an adapter around with you all the time.

I'm all for switching to the latest and greatest standard but in this case it's just going to be damned impractical.

Yeah I noticed that as well. The kicker being it isn't even included, so you basically have to buy it if you want to use it in any server farm (as no one makes KVM that uses DP). As far as I can tell it doesn't appear that DVI is even that popular in the server space yet either.

uaecasher

Apr 7, 2009, 10:02 AM

what are the uses of xserve i mean why use it why not use linux base server?

Schizoid

Apr 7, 2009, 10:02 AM

No VGA and no DVI unless you get an adapter. Every server room I've ever been to has a spare LCD lying around for quick local maintenance. Now you would need to carry an adapter around with you all the time.

I'm all for switching to the latest and greatest standard but in this case it's just going to be damned impractical.

I've installed loads of xserves, thanks to Apple's remote management tools I very rarely need to connect a monitor, can be installed, configured and monitored from my MacBook Pro.
(do keep a mini-dvi just in case though!)

Patriks7

Apr 7, 2009, 10:05 AM

Grimace

Apr 7, 2009, 10:17 AM

Or you can always keep the adapter on the cable of the monitor and connect it that way...

Or on the Xserve itself.

AidenShaw

Apr 7, 2009, 10:20 AM

It is just a shame that drive enclosure does not use a fibre optic connection. I think it will be hard (if not impossible) to utilise the speed advantage of an 8 drive RAID array over GigE or Firewire 800.

eSATA please - it's now a standard feature on many (maybe even most) systems, or an easy, cheap add-on.

iSCSI is nice (assuming that you have a server-class NIC with a good TOE, and that Drobo put a TOE in the DroboPro), but eSATA would be perfect for this thing.

DELLsFan

Apr 7, 2009, 10:31 AM

To go along with my new XServe, I'm ordering a NEW DroboPro rackmount 8-bay enclosure!! (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=7422049)

I love my Drobo (v2)! It's great ... but I wish the prices would come down a bit so I can get another one for home use!

DroboShare is cool and all, but it seems to me the bottleneck of that USB connection precludes more than casual use in a business, simultaneous, multi-user share solution.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

haze

Apr 7, 2009, 10:32 AM

It boggles the mind that on a rather expensive server the RAID card is a $700 option, and that other than the SSD (who uses SSD's in servers?) the only other disk option is SATA. Where is SAS?

Actually the Xserves are not expensive at all, they are actually rather cheap. They are the best value of any product in the Apple line. Have you investigated the cost of enterprise 1u servers?

ChrisA

Apr 7, 2009, 10:33 AM

I believe the SSD is meant for the operating system.

No I doubt that. SSD is best at short random reads. Index files and databases come to mind. Apple uses core data for everything and tha is based on SQL -lite.

Pika

Apr 7, 2009, 10:46 AM

Can the Xserve be used has a Mac Pro ???

pdjudd

Apr 7, 2009, 10:48 AM

Can the Xserve be used has a Mac Pro ???

Not unless you mind the noise - servers tend to be really loud.

polaris20

Apr 7, 2009, 10:52 AM

polaris20

Apr 7, 2009, 10:53 AM

Actually the Xserves are not expensive at all, they are actually rather cheap. They are the best value of any product in the Apple line. Have you investigated the cost of enterprise 1u servers?

Absolutely. Directly comparing it to an HP DL360G6, it measures up nicely.

I love my Drobo (v2)! It's great ... but I wish the prices would come down a bit so I can get another one for home use!

DroboShare is cool and all, but it seems to me the bottleneck of that USB connection precludes more than casual use in a business, simultaneous, multi-user share solution.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

We're using the DroboShare here for internal IT department use, and it works pretty well. But yeah, wouldn't use it for anything high bandwidth. We're using it just for .iso file storage, install files, non-crucial file storage, Symantec Ghost image backup, etc.

Sehnsucht

Apr 7, 2009, 10:57 AM

eSATA please - it's now a standard feature on many (maybe even most) systems, or an easy, cheap add-on.

And...done! (I think.) :D

eSATA bulkhead connector (http://www.amazon.com/Serial-External-Dual-Port-Adapter/dp/B000IZE8XM/ref=pd_cp_e_1?pf_rd_p=413863501&pf_rd_s=center-41&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000NPKGH4&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1ABAVPZZ9BRZBB9XCAVE)

This has been confirmed to work with the Mac Pro's two spare SATA ports on its logic board, so it would obviously also work with the Xserve provided there's a SATA port available. And only 15 bucks! :cool:

DeepCobalt

Apr 7, 2009, 11:09 AM

So it seems that Apple is staying with their 2.26, 2.66, 2.93 Nehalems across the platforms... an early rumor had the Xserves using 2.8 and 3.2s.

Sehnsucht

Apr 7, 2009, 11:15 AM

No VGA and no DVI unless you get an adapter. Every server room I've ever been to has a spare LCD lying around for quick local maintenance. Now you would need to carry an adapter around with you all the time.

I'm all for switching to the latest and greatest standard but in this case it's just going to be damned impractical.

Didn't the previous Xserve use mini-DVI as its video-out port? That would have required an adapter as well. :confused:

I'm still DYING to know whether one can use Mac Pro graphics cards in these things!!! If so, then you'd have a full-sized, dual-link DVI port ready for you right there. ;)

AidenShaw

Apr 7, 2009, 11:16 AM

And...done! (I think.) :D

eSATA bulkhead connector (http://www.amazon.com/Serial-External-Dual-Port-Adapter/dp/B000IZE8XM/ref=pd_cp_e_1?pf_rd_p=413863501&pf_rd_s=center-41&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000NPKGH4&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1ABAVPZZ9BRZBB9XCAVE)

Sorry - I should have quoted the message - my complaint is that the DroboPro does not have eSATA.

All our our Dell Latitudes are coming in with eSATA ports, it's standard on the HP MediaSmart, ...

brenth

Apr 7, 2009, 11:21 AM

cswiger1

Apr 7, 2009, 11:26 AM

I've never really ran a server before, so let me pose a hypothetical situation and see if I understand correctly:

I have a very large family (let’s say 15 to 20 people in the house). I want anyone in the house to be able to go on any of our computers, and use it as if it were their own. Let’s say I have 3 or 4 Mac minis, and a couple notebooks, all of them "fare game" for anyone in the house.

Would xserve be a decent option?

Could each user then just store files/setting to the server under his/her account? here's that part I’m really not sure about: notebooks. When a notebook is brought away from the home (lets say, to a park or a friend's house that doesn't have the internet), could they still access their files? I think there'd be a lot of other cool things I could do with this also, but those would be the main things I would need to make it funtional.

Or Is just signing up for mobile me a better option? (that just doesn't seem flexible enough)

edit: I just read what I wrote. I know accessing files from a notebook without having an internet connection wont work, but what about just user settings and such...

Sehnsucht

Apr 7, 2009, 11:39 AM

Can someone who gets one of these new xserves do a quick test to see if you can install linux in it? I know its a pipe dream, but we have been talking to apple for so long about this, its a secret hope of mine that at some point they will add support for it in efi.

Theoretically you could partition one of the drives and install Linux on the partition, or take two of the three drives out and install Linux on them using another computer, but this would require rebooting the Xserve in order to boot into Linux. So since it's a server, you obviously wouldn't want to be rebooting all the time...although I guess you could avoid that if you *never* needed to use Leopard Server (blasphemy!!!) :eek: :D :D

EDIT: As for Linux as a CTO option, fuhggeddabouddit. :cool:

haze

Apr 7, 2009, 11:40 AM

You can if you have the means, though a Mac Pro with Leopard Server would work just as well. If you are tech savvy you can set the server up as Open Directory Master (DNS is the tricky part) and have the desktops as networked homes and the notebooks as mobile homes. The notebooks would store files locally than sync to the server when on the network. You better have GigE. If you do video or anything really intensive you will need a fiber XSan, which likely takes you over the $10k mark.

I've never really ran a server before, so let me pose a hypothetical situation and see if I understand correctly:

I have a very large family (let’s say 15 to 20 people in the house). I want anyone in the house to be able to go on any of our computers, and use it as if it were their own. Let’s say I have 3 or 4 Mac minis, and a couple notebooks, all of them "fare game" for anyone in the house.

Would xserve be a decent option?

Could each user then just store files/setting to the server under his/her account? here's that part I’m really not sure about: notebooks. When a notebook is brought away from the home (lets say, to a park or a friend's house that doesn't have the internet), could they still access their files? I think there'd be a lot of other cool things I could do with this also, but those would be the main things I would need to make it funtional.

Or Is just signing up for mobile me a better option? (that just doesn't seem flexible enough)

edit: I just read what I wrote. I know accessing files from a notebook without having an internet connection wont work, but what about just user settings and such...

BTW

Apr 7, 2009, 11:43 AM

It boggles the mind that on a rather expensive server the RAID card is a $700 option, and that other than the SSD (who uses SSD's in servers?) the only other disk option is SATA. Where is SAS?

No kidding. Apple should license OSX Server to server OEMs and step out of that market themselves. OEM manufacturers can innovate and compete in this market segment that Apple clearly cannot.

1U system are not enterprise worthy. We either buy blades for the density, management, and power savings or we buy 4U systems that can scale to 32 CPUs and a boat-load of memory. Apple makes neither of those types of systems. The 1U server is a dinosaur and not innovative at all.

cswiger1

Apr 7, 2009, 11:48 AM

adamw

Apr 7, 2009, 11:51 AM

These new servers (Xserve) sound very interesting. I would like to know if the SSD option is a SLC or a MLC SSD drive. Anyone find any details on that?

SLC SSD drives tend to last about 10x longer than MLC SSD drives in real world use, but at a $500 price I wonder if a 128MB SSD is only MLC.

Mtron and MemoRight are the only manufacturers I know of that make a SLC SSD in a 128GB capacity, due to the added expense of SLC memory chips over standard MLC chips used in MLC SSD drives. Even Intel does not make a 128GB SLC Intel Extreme SSD server drive yet.

brenth

Apr 7, 2009, 11:53 AM

EDIT: As for Linux as a CTO option, fuhggeddabouddit. :cool:

I don't mean that it would be CTO, just that the ability would be there as it is on every other machine in apples catalog. You can use other OSs on minis, mp, mb, mbp, imac, but not the xserve. As I understand it they have not included some layer of bios emulation that the other machines have. That is all I want. :rolleyes: Believe me, after years of talks with apple about this, I know it is a pipe dream.

jonesy16

Apr 7, 2009, 11:54 AM

A good Xserve set up would be 2 x 2.26Ghz Quad Xeons
128GB SSD Boot drive
3 x 1TB ADMs with the hardware RAID card
Dual PSUs
Comes to about £4639

Have a look at Dell's website, the equivalent server specification-wise is the
Poweredge R610
with 3 x 300GB SAS RAIDed drives and Windows 2008 25 CAL server
comes to roughly £7500

I know which one I'd prefer! And negotiating Dell's server configuration page is... challenging.

This is hardly a fair comparison. While I do love Apple hardware, the Xserve is by no means blowing the competition out of the water when it comes to cost. For instance, the base configuration for the Dell R610 starts at $1749, a cool $1250 below the base Xserve. That also includes a 3 year ON-SITE hardware warranty. A more accurate model-to-model comparison between the base Xserve and the Dell R610 would be the following:

Dell configured with Xeon 5520 (2.26 x 4 core, +$300), 6GB (3x2GB) memory (+$185), rack kit ($149), 146GB 10K SAS drive (+$50), DVD +/- RW (+$69). Add your favorite linux enterprise OS (e.g. CentOS which costs nothing) for a total of $2492.

VS.

Apple configured with 6GB (3x2GB) memory (+$150), display port to DVI cable (+$29), AppleCare Support 3-year (+$950). This obviously comes with OS X Server Unlimited which has a retail of $999 but can be picked up on Ebay for ~$300 - $400. Total cost? $4128. Or more than $1600 more than the Dell.

What are the differences between these two "similar" configurations? 1. OS. This is obviously the selling point for Apple. If you want OS X server you have only one option. Comparisons to a "25 client Windows" license at $3700 might not be directly applicable as I don't know what that grants you in the Windows world. The "unlimited" client aspect of OS X only refers to file sharing, not logged in users, etc. I think that many of the more recent Linux server OS's compare well and most can be obtained for less than $1000 with a one year support contract, if not free (CentOS). Ultimately the decision is in the hands of the end-user, but from a purely hardware standpoint you can do much better than blindly buying an Apple rackmount.

Two other quick comparisons without the details but following the same methodology:
8 x 2.93 GHz: Dell ($5455), Apple ($7328). Difference: ~$1900.
8 x 2.66 GHz: Dell ($4455), Apple ($6128). Difference: ~$1700.

Conclusion: Apple values their OS X Server and hardware design at about $1700. If you want OS X server, get Apple. If you're just going to install linux (like a post earlier in this thread alluded to, you can do that for much cheaper elsewhere). (As a side note I think OS X server is worth the extra cost, I'm just waiting for Snow Leopard before I upgrade our company computers).

haravikk

Apr 7, 2009, 12:00 PM

It baffles me that SAS drives aren't an option on the XServe's configuration-page, what possible motive could there be for that? I mean they tell you get the SAS drives from the Apple Online store, so why not give the customers some convenience?

Also, what does it mean that empty bays have a "non-functional" drive-module, so you can't put a drive in there afterwards? That's pretty bollocks; Mac Pros come with all-four drive trays.

Aside from the absolute craziness of the drive-options (though the SSD is admittedly an interesting addition I'd probably get) the update is good and pretty-much as-expected. Apple's server just got better; if I start to out-grow my server-needs then I'll certainly consider one :)

jellomizer

Apr 7, 2009, 12:00 PM

X Serve Advatage over a Linux Unix Server.

I never really see an Advantage of Using an Xserve over a Linux/Unix Server. Is there something that makes them really stand out from the others. OS X in my opinion is a really good Desktop/Laptop OS but to do server functions is is just as good as Linux/Unix systems are.

When they were PowerPC chips I could understand the value for those who rather have PowerPC over Intel Architecture but now, I don't see any advatange

gmcalpin

Apr 7, 2009, 12:12 PM

Also, what does it mean that empty bays have a "non-functional" drive-module, so you can't put a drive in there afterwards?
I don't think that's what it means. I would take this to me you can still install "qualified" third-party HDs.

(This being: "Drive bays not configured with a qualified drive module ship with a nonfunctional blank drive carrier and do not support installation of nonqualified third-party hard drives," from the tech specs.)

Cromulent

Apr 7, 2009, 12:19 PM

eSATA please - it's now a standard feature on many (maybe even most) systems, or an easy, cheap add-on.

Only problem with eSATA is that it is that you can't plug it directly into a router and share the RAID array that way like you can with a fibre optic connection. You have to plug it directly into the machine itself which limits its uses.

Cromulent

Apr 7, 2009, 12:23 PM

1U system are not enterprise worthy. We either buy blades for the density, management, and power savings or we buy 4U systems that can scale to 32 CPUs and a boat-load of memory. Apple makes neither of those types of systems. The 1U server is a dinosaur and not innovative at all.

4U servers are completely impractical in a datacentre. Blades have their own issues as well.

I would love to see a web host put lots of 4U servers in a datacentre and then promptly go bust because their density is too low and they need to pay for excessive rack space.

michael.lauden

Apr 7, 2009, 12:26 PM

i wonder how popular these are. barely see the Xserves

polaris20

Apr 7, 2009, 12:36 PM

1U system are not enterprise worthy. We either buy blades for the density, management, and power savings or we buy 4U systems that can scale to 32 CPUs and a boat-load of memory. Apple makes neither of those types of systems. The 1U server is a dinosaur and not innovative at all.

In your opinion.

1U servers with 8 Nehelem cores running ESX3.5 attached through fiber to a SAN are very worthy.
Blades would have been great had we continued down the path of physical servers. And they still are for large data centers. But not for medium sized businesses. The chassis are ridiculously expensive, and the cost per blade is barely cheaper per unit than an equivalent 1U.
1U pizza boxes with ESX attached to a SAN are, in my opinion, the way to go.

AidenShaw

Apr 7, 2009, 12:44 PM

Only problem with eSATA is that it is that you can't plug it directly into a router and share the RAID array that way like you can with a fibre optic connection. You have to plug it directly into the machine itself which limits its uses.

What are you calling "fibre optic", anyway.

I'm going to assume you mean Fibre Channel, since that makes the most sense.

I'll only say two things about FC.

Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel card [Add $600.00]
Brocade 300 - switch - 8 ports - $2,659.99

A fibre SAN is a bit pricey - and the DroboPro is really better for a home server, it's hardly enterprise grade SAN storage.

wizard

Apr 7, 2009, 01:25 PM

To go along with my new XServe, I'm ordering a NEW DroboPro rackmount 8-bay enclosure!! (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=7422049)

I'm in need of a solid backup arraingement and was looking at Drobo recently. Nice but a bit expensive. Still don't know which route I will take as a home built Linux server has a cost advantage. Drobo has a good reputation so is still a contender and setting up one of those new XServes to manage a backup volume has it's own appeal. Decisions decisions.

By the way a Nikon Maymia user here.

Cromulent

Apr 7, 2009, 01:53 PM

What are you calling "fibre optic", anyway.

Fibre Optic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber).

I'm going to assume you mean Fibre Channel, since that makes the most sense.

How so? Fibre optic is a perfectly valid way of describing the fibre cards that Apple supply.

bartzilla

Apr 7, 2009, 01:57 PM

Better than the previous Xserve's integrated 64MB ATI chip. :D

But I always figured that you could throw a Mac Pro-compatible graphics card in one of these things, since the Xserve is basically a "squished" Mac Pro, right? Or is there even any physical room for a full-sized graphics card? :confused:

Better than the previous Xserve's integrated 64MB ATI chip.

Define "better". A server's graphics card only has to be able to display the desktop well enough to let you admin the system. Anything else is a waste of money and resources, and as such the ATI graphics would still be fine in my book.

throw a Mac Pro-compatible graphics card in one of these things

You might be able to fit a mac pro graphics card in there if there is room for the card's cooler (previous servers have had 'full height' card spaces so in that sense there is room for them on the back plate). Again though, why would you? If you need that kind of graphics running on that kind of hardware then Mac Pros are over there to your left...

And mini display port on a server? Thanks Apple, a non-standard (in server room terms) display socket that I'll have to fiddle around with adapters to plug into my rack KVM is just what I needed :rolleyes:.

Can't see an option for 10Gb Ethernet either :-(

I'll be buying one because our G5 based FCP data server is looking about ready for a rest, but things like display port and having to pay this much extra for hardware raid still seem a bit toytown on a server to me.

bartzilla

Apr 7, 2009, 02:01 PM

No kidding. Apple should license OSX Server to server OEMs and step out of that market themselves. OEM manufacturers can innovate and compete in this market segment that Apple clearly cannot.

1U system are not enterprise worthy. We either buy blades for the density, management, and power savings or we buy 4U systems that can scale to 32 CPUs and a boat-load of memory. Apple makes neither of those types of systems. The 1U server is a dinosaur and not innovative at all.

I don't think there's much wrong with 1U servers per se. Not so good as your sole server option though, that's for sure.

polaris20

Apr 7, 2009, 02:08 PM

I don't think there's much wrong with 1U servers per se. Not so good as your sole server option though, that's for sure.

Why not?

It really depends on the system architecture as to whether or not solely 1U's are acceptable. As I said before, a few 1U's, a SAN, and VMWare ESX negates the need for large individual servers in a lot of cases, particularly in small to medium-sized businesses.

BlueRevolution

Apr 7, 2009, 02:15 PM

I have a very large family (let’s say 15 to 20 people in the house). I want anyone in the house to be able to go on any of our computers, and use it as if it were their own. Let’s say I have 3 or 4 Mac minis, and a couple notebooks, all of them "fare game" for anyone in the house.

Would xserve be a decent option?

No. There's no need for that much power for a simple file server. A machine designated as a server running Mac OS X would probably meet your needs just fine, say a Mac Mini. If you want to go all out, buy Mac OS X Server and put that on there. An Xserve in that case (and most others) is just a waste of money and electricity. The Minis are incredibly light on electricity, and have more than enough power to handle a small network.

Can someone who gets one of these new xserves do a quick test to see if you can install linux in it? I know its a pipe dream, but we have been talking to apple for so long about this, its a secret hope of mine that at some point they will add support for it in efi.

You can install Linux on any other Intel Mac, I see no reason why you couldn't on an Xserve. The question is, why would you want to? Linux will run on any x86 or x64 server, which can be had for far less than the Xserve. The only reason to buy an Xserve is to run Mac OS X Server.

X Serve Advatage over a Linux Unix Server.

I never really see an Advantage of Using an Xserve over a Linux/Unix Server. Is there something that makes them really stand out from the others. OS X in my opinion is a really good Desktop/Laptop OS but to do server functions is is just as good as Linux/Unix systems are.

When they were PowerPC chips I could understand the value for those who rather have PowerPC over Intel Architecture but now, I don't see any advatange

I would never use Mac OS X Server, but then I deal with web servers, where Linux is far and away the best choice. Hell, Mac OS X Server just runs Apache anyway.

By my understanding, Mac OS X Server is intended to compete with Windows Server rather than Linux. It's good for running file/netboot/administration services on a large corporate network, or for dealing with streaming media. If you run a web server on it, that would just be because you don't need to dedicate another box to the purpose.

Cromulent

Apr 7, 2009, 02:24 PM

The question is, why would you want to? Linux will run on any x86 or x64 server, which can be had for far less than the Xserve.

Not with the same specs. If you compare the Xserve to other machines with the same specs it is pretty well priced.

wizard

Apr 7, 2009, 02:40 PM

Really it looks like a nice if not innovative upgrade to a server class machine.

As to the people think about this as a better / cheaper alternative to a Mac Pro it does have potential. Yes they are noisy but that can be dealt with. One way to do that is to simply locate the machine in another room. How well this might work with a display port cable is an open question as I don't know the maximum length permitted. It is intriguing to consider as an XServe in the cellar ought to isolate the noise to an acceptable extent.

One other thing that I'd like to get more info on is the power budget in the expansion slots. This to determine just what can go in there GPU wise. Not so much for use as a Mac Pro replacement but rather as an OpenCL platform. Suppsedly they have a 750 watt power supply in the machine so hopefully there is a few watts available for an OpenCL accelerator of a users choosing. I'm actually surprised that Apple hasn't agressively gone after the high performance computing space here, of course OpenCL isn't ready yet but they ought to be able to get the hardware out there.

I especially took notice of the following:

1.
The SSD boot drive is an excellent idea. Done right this becomes a drive that is primarily read and thus is a cheap way to beef up server performance.

2.
The Apple drive modules. Unfortunately this isn't something noted positively as one doesn't want to have to pay excessively for storage. Considering recent firmware problems in the industry I do understand a bit but it is excessive restrictions on customer flexibility in my mind. What if you want to through the latest and greatest SSD tech in there three months down the road? It is a mixed bag but alternative storage in these servers ought to be at the users discretion.

3.
The units have a nice port allotment but I'd like to see more USB ports. Especially one more at the front. The thing here is that USB devices have completely replaced just about everything else for file transfer that doesn't involve the network. Plus you still need a port for mouse and keyboard.

4.
Lots of memory!

5.
Still running 10.5.x. This of course is both good and bad. It is hoped that Snow Leopard server would dramatically improve performance on the new Intel processors. It makes the suggestion that people wait for Snow Leopard plausable.

Dave

wizard

Apr 7, 2009, 03:07 PM

Better than the previous Xserve's integrated 64MB ATI chip.

Define "better". A server's graphics card only has to be able to display the desktop well enough to let you admin the system. Anything else is a waste of money and resources, and as such the ATI graphics would still be fine in my book.

Unfortunately the world does not read your book. The world has all sorts of uses for a 1u box that could benefit from servicable graphics. Not every 1u box ends up being a web serving slave.

throw a Mac Pro-compatible graphics card in one of these things

You might be able to fit a mac pro graphics card in there if there is room for the card's cooler (previous servers have had 'full height' card spaces so in that sense there is room for them on the back plate). Again though, why would you? If you need that kind of graphics running on that kind of hardware then Mac Pros are over there to your left...

Why would you ??? Well how about use as a computational server for one simple answer. I can see a lot of XServes being configured this way once OpenCL hits in force. That of course if the cards can fit in there and not otherwise compromise the system. This is still traditional server hardware stacking just with a different sort of ouput versus a web server.

By the way no the Mac Pro would not do the job here. The question in my mind is did Apple have the foresight to make sure the latest cards from ATI and Nvidia will work in the machine.
[/quote]

And mini display port on a server? Thanks Apple, a non-standard (in server room terms) display socket that I'll have to fiddle around with adapters to plug into my rack KVM is just what I needed :rolleyes:.
[/quote]
This makes about as much sense as the people that whine about HTML mail. The world moves forward my friend, take the attitude above and eventually you will get left behind.

Can't see an option for 10Gb Ethernet either :-(

I'll be buying one because our G5 based FCP data server is looking about ready for a rest, but things like display port and having to pay this much extra for hardware raid still seem a bit toytown on a server to me.

I really would have to think about the viability of hardware RAID on such a server. If you really think you need hardware RAID you ought to have an external box that can reasonably hold all the disks that you need. Software RAID, on a modern box, works fine with three drives. This isn't a G5 box at all. Save the slots for the faster networking cards.

Dave

AidenShaw

Apr 7, 2009, 03:26 PM

Fibre Optic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber).

How so? Fibre optic is a perfectly valid way of describing the fibre cards that Apple supply.

Great - your wiki link points to a page with a photo of a 1.5 Mbps TOSlink !!

"Fibre optic" is a generic description of the physical medium.

It's the same as saying that you've connected a disk with copper. "Copper" could be USB, 1394, SATA, SAS, GbE, parallel port, ...

"Fibre" could be TOS, FDDI, 10GbE, FC and quite a few other protocols. It's ambiguous...

BTW

Apr 7, 2009, 04:10 PM

4U servers are completely impractical in a datacentre. Blades have their own issues as well.

I would love to see a web host put lots of 4U servers in a datacentre and then promptly go bust because their density is too low and they need to pay for excessive rack space.

Don't know where you're coming from. We have many HP DL580s that have VMWare on them and are running many web sites per system. We do a similar virtualization for our SQL Server instance on the same type of system. We've replaced over a hundred systems into a few VMWare clusters.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-3328412-241644-3328422-3454575.html

Blades are very mature and practical. Again I don't know where you're coming from.

deconstruct60

Apr 7, 2009, 04:13 PM

I especially took notice of the following:

1.
The SSD boot drive is an excellent idea. Done right this becomes a drive that is primarily read and thus is a cheap way to beef up server performance.

Not really. It is far more effective at reducing energy costs when the bulk of your storage is off in the NAS/SAN (i.e. off the server). This way the OS drive which isn't doing much ( you shouldn't be heavily swapping more of the time) does nothing when they is nothing to do.

http://www.apple.com/xserve/performance.html [ go down to the disk section]

The SSD drive if want to pull/push alot of data is right in the same ballpark as the SATA drive. This is a SATA SSD drive. You can get nice random I/O response, but your OS should NOT be doing tons of random OS probes at the disk.

SSD are much better as a cache to the spinning drives or for doing tons of random I/O with block sizes that match their read/write block size.

2.
The Apple drive modules. Unfortunately this isn't something noted positively as one doesn't want to have to pay excessively for storage. Considering recent firmware problems in the industry I do understand a bit but it is excessive restrictions on customer flexibility in my mind. What if you want to through the latest and greatest SSD tech in there three months down the road? It is a mixed bag but alternative storage in these servers ought to be at the users discretion.

SSD on the PCI-e slot which isn't bounded by SATA/SAS speeds can have a bigger impact (if Mac OS had drivers for them).

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10212989-64.html

so may not want to put them into Apple drive modules. The IOPs of SSD is in a different class that what is usually attached on SATA/SAS bus. Open question whether really want to use that bus for that in the future for latest/greatest SSD tech. It is nice to package as SATA since it is a driveless option, but that puts limitations on the drive.

Dell and HP have similar market segmentation for the drives that go into their server class boxes also.

If the limitation leads to substantially high likelihood of server uptime then most folks make that trade-off. Stick to the smaller subset of drives that the hardware vendor says is OK.

3.
The units have a nice port allotment but I'd like to see more USB ports. Especially one more at the front. The thing here is that USB devices have completely replaced just about everything else for file transfer that doesn't involve the network. Plus you still need a port for mouse and keyboard.

In a temporary, need a physical keyboard for some deep maintenance, context what is wrong with daisy chaining the mouse off the keyboard?
In norm mode nothing should be hooked to the USB slots on the front. If want to do KVM that is better to put in the back with the rest of the wires that permanently hang out the back of the box.

As for storage. The DVD ROM drive? If it is a specific file(s) that all the machines need after being restored, burn a disk and walk it around.

5.
Still running 10.5.x. This of course is both good and bad. It is hoped that Snow Leopard server would dramatically improve performance on the new Intel processors. It makes the suggestion that people wait for Snow Leopard plausable.

dramatic improvements. Not very likely. Some incremental a couple of percentage, yeah. But when has a new OS been 25-50% faster than the last one (that wasn't a complete dog.) ?

peter2

Apr 7, 2009, 04:25 PM

deconstruct60

Apr 7, 2009, 04:26 PM

Why not?

It really depends on the system architecture as to whether or not solely 1U's are acceptable.

given you only have one kind of building block when this "depends" swings to a architecture that does require something other than a 1U then solely depending upon 1Us is a problem. If you want to narrow the scope solely to 1U problems/solution pairs then having only a 1U is fine.... but that is circular. All system architectures don't naturally fit into a 1U solution.

Just like the consumer market, Apple is niched in the server market. For companies that want to buy from just one vendor, no matter what the problem/solution that is a limitation.

As I said before, a few 1U's, a SAN, and VMWare ESX negates the need for large individual servers in a lot of cases, particularly in small to medium-sized businesses.

Exactly how many active virtual machines do you get running in a 1U/ESX box? I can perhaps see consolidating stuff that was only at < 10% utilization max load anyway. However, if had several 1U boxes at 40-50% capacity how do you consolidate those into a single 1U box?

peter2

Apr 7, 2009, 04:33 PM

Only problem with eSATA is that it is that you can't plug it directly into a router and share the RAID array that way like you can with a fibre optic connection. You have to plug it directly into the machine itself which limits its uses.

The only problem with e-sata is that Apple totally ignores it. It would be perfectly usable in xServe, iMac, MacPro, even Mac mini. Imagine plugging in an external storage box with extra drives and port multiplier support. Apple are stupid omitting eSata. FW is fine for camcorders but makes no sense as esata alternative.

Let the numbers speak:
FW 800: 800 mbit/s
eSata: 3 Gbit/s (i.e. you can put 3 current sata HDDs on one port through port-multiplier support and still not limit the performance of the HDDs by the interface).

Cromulent

Apr 7, 2009, 04:41 PM

Great - your wiki link points to a page with a photo of a 1.5 Mbps TOSlink !!

"Fibre optic" is a generic description of the physical medium.

It's the same as saying that you've connected a disk with copper. "Copper" could be USB, 1394, SATA, SAS, GbE, parallel port, ...

"Fibre" could be TOS, FDDI, 10GbE, FC and quite a few other protocols. It's ambiguous...

It maybe ambiguous in a general sense, but when discussing the Xserve and hard drive arrays (ala the old Xserve RAID) I assumed the meaning was implied. Sorry if you didn't see that.

Don't know where you're coming from. We have many HP DL580s that have VMWare on them and are running many web sites per system. We do a similar virtualization for our SQL Server instance on the same type of system. We've replaced over a hundred systems into a few VMWare clusters.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-3328412-241644-3328422-3454575.html

Blades are very mature and practical. Again I don't know where you're coming from.

My point was if you are offering 4U dedicated servers you are wasting rack space when you can fit more servers into the same density.

The only problem with e-sata is that Apple totally ignores it. It would be perfectly usable in xServe, iMac, MacPro, even Mac mini. Imagine plugging in an external storage box with extra drives and port multiplier support. Apple are stupid omitting eSata. FW is fine for camcorders but makes no sense as esata alternative.

Let the numbers speak:
FW 800: 800 mbit/s
eSata: 3 Gbit/s (i.e. you can put 3 current sata HDDs on one port through port-multiplier support and still not limit the performance of the HDDs by the interface).

eSATA would be good for desktop use I agree. But as I stated before it is not practical for pooled server resources because you can not directly network it, you always need to connect it to a computer and then share the resources using that computer.

deconstruct60

Apr 7, 2009, 04:44 PM

I think they have a little more room in a 1U then the Mac Pro Chassis so they can fit those 2 extra dimms.

Looks like a pretty nice server, now I just need something to stick on it first before I drop $3000 on a server.

No, not really. It is because in the Xserve the DIMM slots are perpendicular to the main motherboard. In the MacPro they are parallel ( because off on a daughter card that is has limited space.)

HPs Zseries boxes (http://www.hp.com/sbso/busproducts-workstations.html)
are about the same size as a Mac Pro and have 12 DIMM slots. They don't have a CPU/Memory daughter card architecture though. It may be harder to do all the easy upgrades you can do with the Mac Pro though without having to get you hands into tight places or removing lots of stuff.

deconstruct60

Apr 7, 2009, 04:50 PM

My point was if you are offering 4U dedicated servers you are wasting rack space when you can fit more servers into the same density.

Of course you can. Physical servers doesn't not necessarily equal the number of deployed servers. You can put more virtual machines with moderate workloads on a 4U box than you can a 1U box. Defacto you can turn a 4U box into somewhat of the equivalent of a Blade chassis. What matters is if you can run the 4U box at 80+% utilization all the time. If each server runs at < 20% utilization the problem is not 1U vs. 4U ; it is consolidation.

Virutalization workload may collapse CPUs but not collapse memory and/or I/O . Typically you can get more I/O and/or memory out of a 4U box then a 1U one. Especially when have multiple VMs going at it at the same time.

Similarly a datacenter isn't solely comprised of web servers. DB servers? Analytics, Data warehouses? those always fit on 1U boxes. ( you can cluster these things to some extent but if offering them up as services you have individualized workloads so may not necessarily be able to cluster just a single virtual instance. )

P.S. Somewhat also moot because XServe boxes aren't really prime ESX (and competitors ) targets. Somewhat a catch 22 if no 4U (or big boxes) then won't every drum up a big enough market for them to make them a target.

deconstruct60

Apr 7, 2009, 05:02 PM

FW is fine for camcorders but makes no sense as esata alternative.

FW would work if they deployed the lasted standard. But that doesn't seem likely. FW 800 was made a standard in 2002. It isn't going to compete with few of the alternatives created in 2006+ . Neither would a server that used a CPU from 2002 compete with the CPUs created 2006+

Apple probably is OK with letting Firewire die off. Makes Intel happier (USB 3.0 gets no competitors) and it is one less battle to champion.

Be yeah this is another capability of firewire in that it was a cheap clustering interconnect technology. It gets tossed for USB and SATA which provide neither.

polaris20

Apr 7, 2009, 05:09 PM

given you only have one kind of building block when this "depends" swings to a architecture that does require something other than a 1U then solely depending upon 1Us is a problem. If you want to narrow the scope solely to 1U problems/solution pairs then having only a 1U is fine.... but that is circular. All system architectures don't naturally fit into a 1U solution.

Never said it fit ALL architectures. I was opposing the opposite end of the absolute, that it NEVER fit in an enterprise. I don't like absolutes like "never" or "always", but people here are really good at it. Sometimes 1U machines work well. Sometimes they don't. They do for us.

Just like the consumer market, Apple is niched in the server market. For companies that want to buy from just one vendor, no matter what the problem/solution that is a limitation.

I certainly don't dispute this. However just as with the rest of their line, if you like it and it fits your structure, then it's fine.

Exactly how many active virtual machines do you get running in a 1U/ESX box? I can perhaps see consolidating stuff that was only at < 10% utilization max load anyway. However, if had several 1U boxes at 40-50% capacity how do you consolidate those into a single 1U box?

VMWare quotes 10 VM's per core on ESX capability.

We have 8-core 1U's, and generally run 5 VM's per machine so far, without an issue. Web servers, mail, Domain controllers, app servers, TS servers, BES server, XMPP server.

Entire VM images are backed up; if the physical server goes down, they can be brought up on any ESX or Workstation machine, and there's differential backups for as much drive space as you want to dedicate to it. So if something goes haywire, you can go back as far as you want to a good version of the VM.

Can't really do that too easily in the "real world".

bartzilla

Apr 7, 2009, 05:23 PM

Why not?

It really depends on the system architecture as to whether or not solely 1U's are acceptable. As I said before, a few 1U's, a SAN, and VMWare ESX negates the need for large individual servers in a lot of cases, particularly in small to medium-sized businesses.

Not everything is a suitable candidate for virtualisation. We've got into ESX 3.5 farms in a big way at work but we still have some blades and some 4U servers and I can't see any of those going soon. We're discussing buying a few more 1Us when we buy 4 new 4U servers and a new blade chassis this year, too.

polaris20

Apr 7, 2009, 05:25 PM

Not everything is a suitable candidate for virtualisation. We've got into ESX 3.5 farms in a big way at work but we still have some blades and some 4U servers and I can't see any of those going soon. We're discussing buying a few more 1Us when we buy 4 new 4U servers and a new blade chassis this year, too.

Oh for crissakes, where did I say everything was? Where did I speak in absolutes? I know it isn't in all cases. But it is in many cases, including ours.

Everyone's different. I don't dispute that. I realize that. Never said otherwise.

Here's me:

It really depends on the system architecture
in a lot of cases

Notice how it doesn't say:

It fits all system architectures
in any case

jons

Apr 7, 2009, 05:47 PM

Is this more than the old base model?

Cromulent

Apr 7, 2009, 05:54 PM

Of course you can. Physical servers doesn't not necessarily equal the number of deployed servers. You can put more virtual machines with moderate workloads on a 4U box than you can a 1U box. Defacto you can turn a 4U box into somewhat of the equivalent of a Blade chassis. What matters is if you can run the 4U box at 80+% utilization all the time. If each server runs at < 20% utilization the problem is not 1U vs. 4U ; it is consolidation.

If you tried selling virtualised servers as dedicated servers then you would basically be lieing to your customers. A dedicated server is just that, an entire computer dedicated to one customer.

Virutalization workload may collapse CPUs but not collapse memory and/or I/O . Typically you can get more I/O and/or memory out of a 4U box then a 1U one. Especially when have multiple VMs going at it at the same time.

Similarly a datacenter isn't solely comprised of web servers. DB servers? Analytics, Data warehouses? those always fit on 1U boxes. ( you can cluster these things to some extent but if offering them up as services you have individualized workloads so may not necessarily be able to cluster just a single virtual instance. )

P.S. Somewhat also moot because XServe boxes aren't really prime ESX (and competitors ) targets. Somewhat a catch 22 if no 4U (or big boxes) then won't every drum up a big enough market for them to make them a target.

I'm guessing you do a lot of work with virtualised servers :).

Virtualisation is fine for some tasks but for web hosts they generally only get used for VPS accounts. Shared accounts can be managed by individual computers or a cluster and dedicated servers must be a whole computer dedicated to one customer anyway.

I am not disputing the fact that you can do some cool stuff with virtualisation, I am just saying that for quite a few tasks 1U servers are better than 4U servers.

polaris20

Apr 7, 2009, 05:54 PM

Is this more than the old base model?

I'm pretty sure it's cheaper than the old base model, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.

twoodcc

Apr 7, 2009, 05:57 PM

nice! now does that mean that they don't offer the 10-client server license anymore?

polaris20

Apr 7, 2009, 06:00 PM

nice! now does that mean that they don't offer the 10-client server license anymore?

I think they still do, in the case you want to run it on a Mac Pro.

wetrix

Apr 7, 2009, 06:18 PM

If you tried selling virtualised servers as dedicated servers then you would basically be lieing to your customers. A dedicated server is just that, an entire computer dedicated to one customer.

I disagree. Though a hosting company needed to be totally transparent about this, I believe dedicated just means fully configurable and that you can have full admin/rebooting privilages, which you get with a VM. As long as you have a good quota of allocated resources, you can run 6 very happy single-vCPU VMs on an octo.

I'm very interested that Apple has for the first time claimed that SSDs are fast, not just durable. This is great, because it means they should start trying to put fast drives in our laptops sometime in the future, which is why we buy SSD anyway.

Cromulent

Apr 7, 2009, 07:22 PM

I disagree. Though a hosting company needed to be totally transparent about this, I believe dedicated just means fully configurable and that you can have full admin/rebooting privilages, which you get with a VM. As long as you have a good quota of allocated resources, you can run 6 very happy single-vCPU VMs on an octo.

Nope, that is called a VPS (or sometimes a VDS) - virtual private server or virtual dedicated server. It is a completely different product.

A dedicated server is just that, dedicated.

polaris20

Apr 7, 2009, 08:56 PM

Nope, that is called a VPS (or sometimes a VDS) - virtual private server or virtual dedicated server. It is a completely different product.

A dedicated server is just that, dedicated.

It depends on how you look at it, and probably where you live, as well as who the host is. These ultra cheap hosting sites probably fudge it a bit when the say "dedicated server".

wetrix

Apr 8, 2009, 02:02 AM

Nope, that is called a VPS (or sometimes a VDS) - virtual private server or virtual dedicated server. It is a completely different product.

A dedicated server is just that, dedicated.

It's not really important. You can call things what you like as long as the customer knows what they are getting. Thinking of servers in terms of physical boxes is somewhat outdated and has little use for the customer. Some people want their very own box in somebody else's room though and you don't get much more dedicated than a single box.

Personally I'd rather rent 8 dedicated cores over two machines and share the other 8 with another client. Sure you're twice as likely to have a failure, but you have an extra level of redundancy. Win.

On a new note, will the Apple website start to speed up a bit as they bring new xserves? Probably not :-(

Winni

Apr 8, 2009, 04:42 AM

Especially as you get an unlimited client version of OS X Server for it. Try buying an unlimited client version of Windows Server (I know you can't) and see how much that costs you...

Stop kidding yourself. Of course you can, the things are called "connector" or "CPU" licenses, depending on the product. Besides that, you can install Windows on a variety of servers that Apple's engineers are not even allowed to dream of - and the Microsoft BackOffice platform is much more versatile than OS X Server. I also strongly doubt that Apple's support for their servers gets anywhere near what Dell provides.

Winni

Apr 8, 2009, 04:59 AM

[QUOTE=Cromulent;7422207]True I don't disagree I was just making the point that Apple are pretty competitive in the server world./QUOTE]

If that were true, we might actually be seeing Apple servers "in the wild". But as it is, I have never seen a company that's using them, and I've seen quite a few server rooms and companies in my life.

The list why Apple isn't - and cannot be - a real or significant player in the server market is too long to put it here.

wizard

Apr 8, 2009, 05:27 AM

Not really. It is far more effective at reducing energy costs when the bulk of your storage is off in the NAS/SAN (i.e. off the server). This way the OS drive which isn't doing much ( you shouldn't be heavily swapping more of the time) does nothing when they is nothing to do.

Which is exactly the point with the boot drive sitting in the chassis separate from the magnetic drives. It is a low power device capable of responding quickly when needed. When not needed it sips power.

As for swapping and logging I'm really hoping Apple isn't doing this to a SSD.

http://www.apple.com/xserve/performance.html [ go down to the disk section]

The SSD drive if want to pull/push alot of data is right in the same ballpark as the SATA drive. This is a SATA SSD drive. You can get nice random I/O response, but your OS should NOT be doing tons of random OS probes at the disk.

What the OS does with the disk is very dependent upon use. For some applications the SSD could be a win if boot and applications run from it.

SSD are much better as a cache to the spinning drives or for doing tons of random I/O with block sizes that match their read/write block size.

I think you are missing two important points. One is that a SSD can lower your power budget. Some apps thrive on platforms that have data and code storage separated.

SSD on the PCI-e slot which isn't bounded by SATA/SAS speeds can have a bigger impact (if Mac OS had drivers for them).

I can't disagree with the idea that PCI-Express is a better place for SSD storage and by extension that SATA is pretty much a dead end. The problem is as you point out no Mac hardware. In the meantime we are very much on the bleeding edge of SSD systems and as such better hardware is arriving every few months. Most of this hardware is on SATA so ideally you would be able to readily implement it on an Apple server.

As to SSD performance in a server that requires knowing the specifics to determine value. In any event for the right app SSD can be a performance advantage even on SATA.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10212989-64.html

so may not want to put them into Apple drive modules. The IOPs of SSD is in a different class that what is usually attached on SATA/SAS bus. Open question whether really want to use that bus for that in the future for latest/greatest SSD tech. It is nice to package as SATA since it is a driveless option, but that puts limitations on the drive.

Long term yes there is the fact that SATA is a dead interface. It simply can't keep up with the fastest SSD technology. However until a standard card format comes around (supporting hot swap for example) we will have to live with SATA and it's limitations. Thankfully SSD on SATA does offer advantages over the spinning storage formats and often can be justified at current prices.

Dell and HP have similar market segmentation for the drives that go into their server class boxes also.

If the limitation leads to substantially high likelihood of server uptime then most folks make that trade-off. Stick to the smaller subset of drives that the hardware vendor says is OK.

I would fully expect that a vendor would have tested and validated drives available. The thing that bothers me is the apparent restriction on running alternative drives. At some point the person implementing the alternative drive will have a better idea than Apple as to it's suitability. Frankly excessive restrictions just limit the potential applications for the hardware.

In a temporary, need a physical keyboard for some deep maintenance, context what is wrong with daisy chaining the mouse off the keyboard?

1.
Speed
2.
A device might already be mounted.

In norm mode nothing should be hooked to the USB slots on the front.

That is your opinion and in my mind reflects a narrow view as to what a piece of server hardware can be put to use as.

If want to do KVM that is better to put in the back with the rest of the wires that permanently hang out the back of the box.

KVMs certainly work but not all operations adopt that approach. Some places simple use a stand on wheels to place a keyboard at the troubled station.

As for storage. The DVD ROM drive? If it is a specific file(s) that all the machines need after being restored, burn a disk and walk it around.

A good choice if it cuts on a DVD and all your machines reliably read the disk. In any event between USB dongles and USB drives the use of DVD/CDs for such file transfers have fallen off rapidly.

dramatic improvements. Not very likely. Some incremental a couple of percentage, yeah. But when has a new OS been 25-50% faster than the last one (that wasn't a complete dog.) ?

That is a good question and frankly no one knows hot well Mac OS/X will respond to Apples speed ups. Personally I believe there is a lot of room in Mac OS for speed ups. How that would translate into a benefit on a server is harder to define.

Given how Linux performs on similar hardware I suspect that there is much Apple could do to enhance server performance. That doesn't even include working OpenCL into the equation.

Dave

Cromulent

Apr 8, 2009, 06:02 AM

Thinking of servers in terms of physical boxes is somewhat outdated and has little use for the customer.

Not really. If you have a website that will bring a VPS down because it requires too many resources then you obviously need to start looking at dedicated hardware.

Plus the new rules coming into effect regarding merchants processing credit cards requires them to have dedicated hardware.

Stop kidding yourself. Of course you can, the things are called "connector" or "CPU" licenses, depending on the product. Besides that, you can install Windows on a variety of servers that Apple's engineers are not even allowed to dream of - and the Microsoft BackOffice platform is much more versatile than OS X Server. I also strongly doubt that Apple's support for their servers gets anywhere near what Dell provides.

Hardware support has always been Apples weakness, I'll give you that.

The point I was making was that price wise Windows is way up there. I seem to remember that the last time I looked the cost of a 2 CPU version of Windows was much higher than the cost of the unlimited client version of Mac OS X Server.

True I don't disagree I was just making the point that Apple are pretty competitive in the server world.

The list why Apple isn't - and cannot be - a real or significant player in the server market is too long to put it here.

I think saying "cannot" is pushing the realms of truth a little. Yes, they need to fix a few things and become more serious about the enterprise. But if you look at it from a purely cost based situation, the Xserve is extremely competitively priced, the OS is cheap in comparison to Windows (and some Linux support contracts I might add), plus some innovative features coming the future that will help with performance (Grand Central is going to be big when it hits for OS X Server).

polaris20

Apr 8, 2009, 08:00 AM

Stop kidding yourself. Of course you can, the things are called "connector" or "CPU" licenses, depending on the product. Besides that, you can install Windows on a variety of servers that Apple's engineers are not even allowed to dream of - and the Microsoft BackOffice platform is much more versatile than OS X Server. I also strongly doubt that Apple's support for their servers gets anywhere near what Dell provides.

And in my experience you'll need Dell's excellent support, because server components on Dells fail a lot!

AidenShaw

Apr 8, 2009, 08:25 AM

....SATA is a dead interface. It simply can't keep up with the fastest SSD technology.

Seagate demos world's first SATA 6Gbps hard disk as speed-freaks swoon (http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/09/seagate-demonstrates-worlds-first-sata-6gbps-hard-disk-making-s?icid=sphere_blogsmith_inpage_engadget)

Sehnsucht

Apr 8, 2009, 09:03 AM

Long term yes there is the fact that SATA is a dead interface. It simply can't keep up with the fastest SSD technology. However until a standard card format comes around (supporting hot swap for example) we will have to live with SATA and it's limitations. Thankfully SSD on SATA does offer advantages over the spinning storage formats and often can be justified at current prices.

Dead? Lolwut? :D

The claim that "it simply can't keep up with the fastest SSD technology" sounds rather subjective, because interfaces get updated every now and then to support more bandwidth...I don't see how SATA is any different. If it were truly dead that would mean it has been replaced by something far better, but I don't think it has. :cool:

polaris20

Apr 8, 2009, 10:06 AM

Until I can get SSD drives for the same price as the equivalent sized SATA (which itself is impossible, because there's no such thing as a 2TB SSD) SATA ain't dyin'.

EDIT

Perhaps I misread; he was apparently talking about the interface itself, not necessarily the drives.

deconstruct60

Apr 8, 2009, 12:59 PM

Never said it fit ALL architectures. I was opposing the opposite end of the absolute, that it NEVER fit in an enterprise. I don't like absolutes like "never" or "always", but people here are really good at it. Sometimes 1U machines work well. Sometimes they don't. They do for us.

Nice backtrack. How about we go back to what you wrote the first time back in post 86 and what was quoted from post 85.

I don't think there's much wrong with 1U servers per se. Not so good as your sole server option though, that's for sure.

Why not? ...

The 'not' in "Why not?" negates the 'not' in "Not so good as your sole server option...". Which is equivalent to asserting that: it is good as your sole server option. Sole server option is an absolute. If you are against absolutes, then your comment should have been "I agree. There are a subset of situations where 1U is the right choice ... " as opposed to "Why not?".

You appear to in the mindset that it is OK because the 1U solution space is all you are considering. For the set of problems where need to virtualize and the resource requirements are a significant fraction of a 1U box then other options should be on the table; i.e. not good as sole server option.

VMWare quotes 10 VM's per core on ESX capability.

VMWare doesn't do this. I imagine there is a "rule of thumb ... 10" or "up to 10 generally", but suspect you have removed this from the context or only have consolidated extremely lightweight workloads. (e.g., number like that thrown around here but typically followed by the caveat on having to consider workload http://communities.vmware.com/thread/170137 ) Virtualization is more than counting cores/CPUs. You are virtualizing cores, memory, and I/O. Documents like the following http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_301_201_config_max.pdf (may be newer ones just first one found on search) list all three components. You'd need to size your consolidated workload on all 3 dimensions. In short, It is at least a 3 dimensional problem ( 4 if doing consolidation across geographic regions with different peak workloads). You have to account for all 3 dimensions in your sizing efforts not just one. Where 1Us tend to crap out on VMs for machines that don't have minimalistic memory requirements is that they can't scale up that large. 4Us generally can. [ These days cores are doubling from previous generations. ] Especially when they are NUMA boxes and can get 4 different banks of DIMM slots and typically a higher number of high bandwidth PCI slots with multiple PCI hubs.

Sure if you are consolidating several 1U boxes that were all running at avg running <5% CPU , <10% Memory and <10% I/O. For example, serveral "servers" that could have been happily running on a bunch of mac minis. However, 1-3 of those which peak out at 60% utilizations your service levels will crap out when 2 of them both peak out at the same time. You also have less flexibility to whatever bounded allocations that VMWare allows for so that service levels across machines are not impacted. Primarily, because just have less resources to allocate.

polaris20

Apr 8, 2009, 01:12 PM

Nice backtrack. How about we go back to what you wrote the first time back in post 86 and what was quoted from post 85.

The 'not' in "Why not?" negates the 'not' in "Not so good as your sole server option...". Which is equivalent to asserting that: it is good as your sole server option. Sole server option is an absolute. If you are against absolutes, then your comment should have been "I agree. There are a subset of situations where 1U is the right choice ... " as opposed to "Why not?".

You appear to in the mindset that it is OK because the 1U solution space is all you are considering. For the set of problems where need to virtualize and the resource requirements are a significant fraction of a 1U box then other options should be on the table; i.e. not good as sole server option.

VMWare doesn't do this. I imagine there is a "rule of thumb ... 10" or "up to 10 generally", but suspect you have removed this from the context or only have consolidated extremely lightweight workloads. (e.g., number like that thrown around here but typically followed by the caveat on having to consider workload http://communities.vmware.com/thread/170137 ) Virtualization is more than counting cores/CPUs. You are virtualizing cores, memory, and I/O. Documents like the following http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_301_201_config_max.pdf (may be newer ones just first one found on search) list all three components. You'd need to size your consolidated workload on all 3 dimensions. In short, It is at least a 3 dimensional problem ( 4 if doing consolidation across geographic regions with different peak workloads). You have to account for all 3 dimensions in your sizing efforts not just one. Where 1Us tend to crap out on VMs for machines that don't have minimalistic memory requirements is that they can't scale up that large. 4Us generally can. [ These days cores are doubling from previous generations. ] Especially when they are NUMA boxes and can get 4 different banks of DIMM slots and typically a higher number of high bandwidth PCI slots with multiple PCI hubs.

Sure if you are consolidating several 1U boxes that were all running at avg running <5% CPU , <10% Memory and <10% I/O. For example, serveral "servers" that could have been happily running on a bunch of mac minis. However, 1-3 of those which peak out at 60% utilizations your service levels will crap out when 2 of them both peak out at the same time. You also have less flexibility to whatever bounded allocations that VMWare allows for so that service levels across machines are not impacted. Primarily, because just have less resources to allocate.

I said "Why not?" because the person being quoted said it's not good as a sole architecture. I disagreed because it can be, but I wanted to hear the reasoning. There is no backtracking involved, sorry you didn't understand that. I also think I made that abundantly clear in following posts that I viewed it as a possible option for some, but not everyone. Please read the whole thread.

Also convenient how you left out what I said immediately after I said "why not"

It really depends on the system architecture as to whether or not solely 1U's are acceptable. As I said before, a few 1U's, a SAN, and VMWare ESX negates the need for large individual servers in a lot of cases, particularly in small to medium-sized businesses.

In post 95, you say:

All system architectures don't naturally fit into a 1U solution.
__________________
I don't disagree. For your company, your needs clearly dictate a 2U or 4U or blade. Good deal! I don't doubt you.

What part of that doesn't make sense as to my viewpoint?
And thanks for telling me everything I already knew about what it takes to virtualize. The lesson was unnecessary.

EDIT

Let me make myself clear, since you're apparently misreading me.

In some situations, such as ours (and other SMB's), it is my opinion that a 1U architecture as a sole format will work completely fine, especially coupled with virtualization.

It will, however, not work in all situations, apparently such as yours.

This is what I've meant from the get-go.

deconstruct60

Apr 8, 2009, 01:44 PM

Not really. If you have a website that will bring a VPS down because it requires too many resources then you obviously need to start looking at dedicated hardware.

Well gee ... if you excessively oversubscribe the physical resources you will run into problems. If you point 10,000 users at a database running on a single 1U box it will suck too.

One thing you can do is use a hypervisor that has resource service level commitments you can set. Secondly what you can to is dynamically move VMs off to another machine to reduce the oversubscription. Take the slower moving stuff off machine or move this soon to be peaker load to hit a off to a machine with alot more resources .... errr instance say a 4U box. Then move it back after the peaker load subsides. Other than a couple of seconds on movement back and forth customer doesn't see the difference.
Probably will think browser is doing something funky for second.

Unless you are hosting 100% merchants and hit some kind of Black Friday sales load, this works.

Plus the new rules coming into effect regarding merchants processing credit cards requires them to have dedicated hardware.

one this is a niche problem (many sites punt processing off to an external site anyway ... primarily because locking down a server to the extent this implies is hard. ). Second, chuckle ... yeah right IBM mainframes and high end unix boxes are out of the processing business because they don't run OS on raw iron. Please, do tell Visa and Mastercard because their core operations run on virtual machines.

Perhaps dedicated I/O and some requirements on qualifying hypervisors, but I'd like to see these rules. Again there are some somewhat insecure ways folks have craved out pseudo virtual setups with stuff like BSD jail and Solaris Containers but not quite the same thing. Staying away from the paravirtualization stuff and going to be pretty hard for one VM to see content from another VM.

Operation wise though a host would be blocked because their sysadmins have access at the hypervisor level and could bypass security in the hosted OS. But that's isn't because of the software. That is because the trust network is not controlled. If that anal about security though, they should allow them physical access either. So not only dedicated but secure from the host personnel too.

I think saying "cannot" is pushing the realms of truth a little.

The other problem for Apple is how being a major player is measured. If in terms of revenue ... they'll likely never catch up... [ unless jump up and buy Sun. Not holding my breath. ]. In terms of units sold they can be decently in the game. Primarily selling to the lower half of the small-medium business folks that just need a small IT "department".

polaris20

Apr 8, 2009, 01:53 PM

The other problem for Apple is how being a major player is measured. If in terms of revenue ... they'll likely never catch up... [ unless jump up and buy Sun. Not holding my breath. ]. In terms of units sold they can be decently in the game. Primarily selling to the lower half of the small-medium business folks that just need a small IT "department".

I don't think Apple will ever play in a market above what you're saying (smaller end of SMB), because they lack flexibility not only in the hardware, but also their licensing. I can't have a physical XServe running some stuff, with an ESX server running another instance of OS X Server as backup, because they won't allow it.

I can't even install ESX on a couple XServes to then run multiple instances of OS X Server, because even though it's physically possible, they won't allow it. That sucks.

deconstruct60

Apr 8, 2009, 02:06 PM

I am not disputing the fact that you can do some cool stuff with virtualisation, I am just saying that for quite a few tasks 1U servers are better than 4U servers.

What I'm getting at is that 1U is not necesarrily more space efficient just because it is physically smaller. That's how things to into this explosion of boxes that folks used in the late 90's to early 2000's . 1 ,000's of boxes all running at 5<% utilization are a waste of space, not conserving it.

Nor am I saying everyone has to use 4U all the time. It is just a tool in the tool belt to use where appropriate. And yeah virtualization with bad security and bad resource management has problems. Just as any other tool not properly utilized.

What appears here is that folks are taking experiences of consolidating "mac mini" loads and generalizing that into 1Us are generally good for VM consolidation. I think that is a leap to generalize that to consolidation in general. In the past most of the x86 server vendors have capped the 1Us on memory and I/O bandwidth. It is better now with Nehalem era (and AMD quads) 1U but the 4U similarly improve too. ( and chuckle the mac minis are better too. ).

Cromulent

Apr 8, 2009, 03:02 PM

Well gee ... if you excessively oversubscribe the physical resources you will run into problems. If you point 10,000 users at a database running on a single 1U box it will suck too.

Of course, that is when you would get a second one. 2x 1U servers generally perform better than 1 4U server anyway, plus they have the added advantage of being more fault tolerant (one server falls over then the other server can pick up the load temporarily while you bring the other one back online).

One thing you can do is use a hypervisor that has resource service level commitments you can set. Secondly what you can to is dynamically move VMs off to another machine to reduce the oversubscription. Take the slower moving stuff off machine or move this soon to be peaker load to hit a off to a machine with alot more resources .... errr instance say a 4U box. Then move it back after the peaker load subsides. Other than a couple of seconds on movement back and forth customer doesn't see the difference.
Probably will think browser is doing something funky for second.

I've never argued against virtual machines, they have their place and they are certainly useful. All I have said is that they are not the answer to everything and there is certainly a large dedicated server market out there. Just spend any amount of time on the popular web hosting forums.

Most people realise that a VM while good has some rather important limitations, for a start web hosts generally try and stuff as many VM's onto one server as they possibly can to maximise their profits, this has a huge detrimental effect on the performance you get. The only way to make sure you get the performance that you require is to get a dedicated server, otherwise you have absolutely no idea what resources your host is allowing you.

one this is a niche problem (many sites punt processing off to an external site anyway ... primarily because locking down a server to the extent this implies is hard. ). Second, chuckle ... yeah right IBM mainframes and high end unix boxes are out of the processing business because they don't run OS on raw iron. Please, do tell Visa and Mastercard because their core operations run on virtual machines.

You obviously missed the point here.

The reason you can't do credit card processing with VPS's is because multiple indepentant customers are using the same machine. Obviously Visa and Mastercard may well be using virtualised services on their main frames but the important point here is that only Visa and Mastercard respectively have access to that / those servers.

Perhaps dedicated I/O and some requirements on qualifying hypervisors, but I'd like to see these rules. Again there are some somewhat insecure ways folks have craved out pseudo virtual setups with stuff like BSD jail and Solaris Containers but not quite the same thing. Staying away from the paravirtualization stuff and going to be pretty hard for one VM to see content from another VM.

Here is information about the rules:

http://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/

Operation wise though a host would be blocked because their sysadmins have access at the hypervisor level and could bypass security in the hosted OS. But that's isn't because of the software. That is because the trust network is not controlled. If that anal about security though, they should allow them physical access either. So not only dedicated but secure from the host personnel too.

Yep, that is in the rules too. Only explicitly authorised personel are allowed access to the servers so you would need to colo your own hardware in a secure cage at a data centre.

bartzilla

Apr 8, 2009, 03:18 PM

Oh for crissakes, where did I say everything was? Where did I speak in absolutes? I know it isn't in all cases. But it is in many cases, including ours.

Everyone's different. I don't dispute that. I realize that. Never said otherwise.

Here's me:

Notice how it doesn't say:

Bad day? You're jumping up and down defending yourself from an attack that never actually happened, there.

bartzilla

Apr 8, 2009, 03:24 PM

And in my experience you'll need Dell's excellent support, because server components on Dells fail a lot!

I've had some odd experience with Dell servers and reliability. From what I've seen their servers tend to be either nearly completely reliable or "haunted". I'm not talking of product ranges here but a rack of identical servers where some don't seem to fail for years on end and the one next to it appears to always have some minor nitpick error. Wonder if one of them was just put together on Friday afternoon.

deconstruct60

Apr 8, 2009, 03:26 PM

Which is exactly the point with the boot drive sitting in the chassis separate from the magnetic drives. It is a low power device capable of responding quickly when needed. When not needed it sips power.

As for swapping and logging I'm really hoping Apple isn't doing this to a SSD.

if the SSD drive is the only drive in the box when shipped, where else would the swapping and logging go???

Swapping is a form of caching. So that's fine as long as the swap block size is some multiple of the SSD write block size. Although you are wearing the drive out if excessively swap. The bigger problem is that the log ( security and all the normal unix/BSD logs ) that get written out likely in much smallere chunks and recycled are likely to chew up write lifetime also at a rate larger then of the amount of data written. Also probably not much of a problem over a 3 year lifespan as long as not many other larger write lifetime consumers.

What the OS does with the disk is very dependent upon use. For some applications the SSD could be a win if boot and applications run from it.

launching applications is more of a sequential read problem than a random read one. Boot is slightly different because lots of different files are being read. But boot faster..... If you booting your server alot you have bigger issues than the disk drives. Should be seeing uptimes in terms of months if not years. Optimizing what do in those kind of time frames is a curious priority ordering.

I think you are missing two important points. One is that a SSD can lower your power budget. Some apps thrive on platforms that have data and code storage separated.

How did a miss the point when I said power was a benefit right there at the top? And if your sever ships with just on OS boot drive that is SSD internal to the box... exactly where is all the data the applications consume being stored?

SDD drives have been and will continue to be MORE expensive than Hard drives. This is a very similar hyperbole that happened several years ago when folks said tape drives were dead and that all back up would be done to hard drives. Hard Drives aren't likely to completely disappear. As long as folks requirements for retained data keep going up into the terabyte and up range never going to be completely able to store all of your data onto SSD drives. Just a subset. SSD still has an order of magnitude to come down in price.

Read this article by Adam Leventhal
http://blogs.sun.com/ahl/entry/hybrid_storage_pools_in_cacm
http://mags.acm.org/communications/200807/?pg=49

I can't disagree with the idea that PCI-Express is a better place for SSD storage and by extension that SATA is pretty much a dead end.

Again spinning hard drives are not dead. Neither are CDs and DVDs. Spinning media is going to be around for a long while. What I am saying that to maximize performance from a SSD drive SATA and SAS suffer. Primarily because their upper limits are bounded buy the rotational limitations.

The higher than 15K rpm drives are probably dead. But the slower spinning ones can be made cheaper and more dense than the SSDs.

However, just like there is a market for SAS and SATA drives there will be tiers. Some folks who don't need max speed and are more price sensitive so may go with the cheaper drive and get SATA SSD drives. However, doing RAID 0 of SSD SATA drives... if the SATA interface is the bottleneck... chuck it. Not buy more "drives".

The problem is as you point out no Mac hardware. In the meantime we are very much on the bleeding edge of SSD systems and as such better hardware is arriving every few months. Most of this hardware is on SATA so ideally you would be able to readily implement it on an Apple server.

Don't need "mac hardware", need drivers. Fusion I/O cards work in Linux and Windows. If there was a mac driver (on card for EFI and in OS so can present as drive) would have the hardware also.

Again can use SATA. It certainly appears that Apple is stick there SSD drive on a SATA interface. However, you are NOT going to get max performance out of it. If you want to use it to speed up the the other parts of the disk storage hierarchy you'd want to.

As to SSD performance in a server that requires knowing the specifics to determine value. In any event for the right app SSD can be a performance advantage even on SATA.

You never get something for nothing. The downside on SSDs is that they can wear out faster than hard drives. Especially if do an unusually large amount of writing.

Long term yes there is the fact that SATA is a dead interface. It simply can't keep up with the fastest SSD technology.

Spinning disk technology has had 2-3+ interfaces that have lived in parallel over the years. Right now that is SATA , SAS , and FC. Nothing says that SSD just has to have just one. In fact, the opposite. SDD is going to have very similar segmented economic driving forces.

However until a standard card format comes around (supporting hot swap for example) we will have to live with SATA and it's limitations.

Can hot swap PCI cards now in servers and OS that support it. Apple doesn't, but that doesn't mean can't right now. IBM, Sun, etc. boxes do that now.

The thing that bothers me is the apparent restriction on running alternative drives. At some point the person implementing the alternative drive will have a better idea than Apple as to it's suitability. Frankly excessive restrictions just limit the potential applications for the hardware.

You can run alternative hard drives now. Poke around the internet for directions. Just don't ask Apple for support if it doesn't work.

KVMs certainly work but not all operations adopt that approach. Some places simple use a stand on wheels to place a keyboard at the troubled station.

Right and how exactly do you hook up the video monitory without a visit to the back end of the machine? The USB port on the front isn't the only port.
There are more on the back. If you have to go to the back of the machine anyway to hook up the video just use one of the ones back there while you are there. All of this is mainly being too lazy to go to the back of the machine if want to hook up more than one.

Secondly with a cart, if hauling around KVM on the hard how much harder to haul around a USB port expander on the same cart? Take the one port, multiple it by 4 or 5 and no have even more ports than standard server only in this temporary situation. If your DVD drive is flakey, plug one in on USB. etc. etc.

With a more permanently hooked up KVM set up then you probably don't have to go to the back to get "turned on". So you are left with no keyboard, no mouse and just this flash drive. One port. Done.

A good choice if it cuts on a DVD and all your machines reliably read the disk.

You are in an exceptional situation. The server is hosed in some way. Otherwise have the network to get any files there. Apple's tools and the OS recovery all ship DVD ... how do you use those with flakey DVD drives?

Given how Linux performs on similar hardware I suspect that there is much Apple could do to enhance server performance. That doesn't even include working OpenCL into the equation.

OpenCL is not going to be some panacea. Sure there maybe some splashy demos that show speed ups, but it isn't going to make MySQL or SQLite or Word, etc. go substantially faster. Questionable whether it would speed up basic file or deep kernel operations either.

Secondly, if thinking going to gain equivalence with Linux then they'd need to make some hardcore changes to the Mac OS kernel. The Mach + glued on FreeBSD set up has overhead that Linux has forgone precisely because because of some of the performance downsides.

Cromulent

Apr 8, 2009, 03:57 PM

one this is a niche problem (many sites punt processing off to an external site anyway

Just going back to this point again quickly. Even if you do use an external site you still have to comply with the PCI rules.

jons

Apr 8, 2009, 04:01 PM

I'm pretty sure it's cheaper than the old base model, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Ok, thanks.

polaris20

Apr 8, 2009, 04:06 PM

Bad day? You're jumping up and down defending yourself from an attack that never actually happened, there.

eh, probably. My point apparently didn't come across too well to more than just you, so I apologize.

I've had some odd experience with Dell servers and reliability. From what I've seen their servers tend to be either nearly completely reliable or "haunted". I'm not talking of product ranges here but a rack of identical servers where some don't seem to fail for years on end and the one next to it appears to always have some minor nitpick error. Wonder if one of them was just put together on Friday afternoon.

Dunno, but I've had similar experience as an networking consultant in Chicago. A rack of 10 identical Dells at one client; all work great except one, which has the RAID controller die, all drives die at least once, bad memory, bad PSU.

Then another client, same sort of thing. Different model, different year made. Some clients had more "haunted" Dells than others.

Of course it isn't a scientific study, but certainly more than enough to steer me clear of Dell for good.

deconstruct60

Apr 8, 2009, 04:28 PM

I don't think Apple will ever play in a market above what you're saying (smaller end of SMB), because they lack flexibility not only in the hardware, but also their licensing. I can't have a physical XServe running some stuff, with an ESX server running another instance of OS X Server as backup, because they won't allow it.

Where does it say they don't all it. All the license outlines is that:

You have to run in on Apple Label Hardware
You have to buy/license a copy of Server for every instance of Server you have running on said Apple label hardware

The HUGE blocker is more so that ESX doesn't boot (without hacks) and is not supported by VMWare on XServe. Apple hardware boots with EFI. The vast majority of the x86 server world is either booting BIOS or indirectly into a hypervisor (via firmware attached to the motherboard.. but that too is bootstrapped by the BIOS.). It is still the case that EFI hardware is exceptional. Maybe that will change if Windows7 and the server version that comes after Windows7 boots EFI but there is tons of inertia blocking that. ( PCs still coming with PS/2 keyboard and parallel ports on them.) When and if EFI becomes pervasive that is going to Apple some fits too. ( so they are certainly not in a hurry to pull the rest of the market that way. But it does make Intel happy because EFI was one of their initiatives that hoped folks would pick up. So Apple is a "good" partner. )

Since ESXi is now free and Apple has all these extra quirks to get around, I doubt VMWare is going to cert XServe unless Apple subsidizes the effort. You'd think with billions in the bank that wouldn't be a problem, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I don't think it is a priority for them and there is a sizable, "dongle the OS to the hardware" faction inside of Apple.

I can't even install ESX on a couple XServes to then run multiple instances of OS X Server, because even though it's physically possible, they won't allow it. That sucks.

Given that you can only buy an XServe with a Mac OS X license I can' see how you loose that license because you wipe the disk and resinstall the same OS with the OS recovery disk that Apple gave you. If your hard drive dies and you put in a new one did you loose your Mac OS X server license. nope.
What is the difference? You bought the license and it is running on Apple labeled hardware. What are the other requirements to meet put forward by Apple? For your 2nd , 3rd copy you bought those too presumably. Again where is the disconnect in the licensing terms?

As long as all the servers in your virtual machine cluster are all Apple labeled hardware and you bought as many as the maximum copies of VMs you create and run (i.e. images that aren't purely backups images). Where is the disconnect?

Doesn't microsoft make folks buy each copy of the OS also? Isn't stopping that from running on ESX.

deconstruct60

Apr 8, 2009, 04:35 PM

Yep, that is in the rules too. Only explicitly authorised personel are allowed access to the servers so you would need to colo your own hardware in a secure cage at a data centre.

How is this a web hosting provider situation when you put your own hardware in a locked down colo location at the site and host's job is solely to provide internet bandwidth , power , and cold air?

It is now YOUR box (or boxes). All the host is doing is aggregating the ultility providers into a single bill. That is not providing dedicated machines , there is no machine and/or sysadmin services there at all. Maybe you get a cheaper deal somehow by leasing the box through them (could happen is they have a better bulk rate relationship with the hardware vendors ). So perhaps technically don't "own" the box. But the "host" isn't doing much in that case with the box itself.

polaris20

Apr 8, 2009, 04:55 PM

Where does it say they don't all it. All the license outlines is that:

You have to run in on Apple Label Hardware
You have to buy/license a copy of Server for every instance of Server you have running on said Apple label hardware

The HUGE blocker is more so that ESX doesn't boot (without hacks) and is not supported by VMWare on XServe. Apple hardware boots with EFI. The vast majority of the x86 server world is either booting BIOS or indirectly into a hypervisor (via firmware attached to the motherboard.. but that too is bootstrapped by the BIOS.). It is still the case that EFI hardware is exceptional. Maybe that will change if Windows7 and the server version that comes after Windows7 boots EFI but there is tons of inertia blocking that. ( PCs still coming with PS/2 keyboard and parallel ports on them.) When and if EFI becomes pervasive that is going to Apple some fits too. ( so they are certainly not in a hurry to pull the rest of the market that way. But it does make Intel happy because EFI was one of their initiatives that hoped folks would pick up. So Apple is a "good" partner. )

That is true, and I also forgot that Apple allows you to run OSX Server VM's on an XServe running Parallels Server. So yeah, it's more on VMWare's part, not Apple's. But I doubt that'll change any time soon.

Since ESXi is now free and Apple has all these extra quirks to get around, I doubt VMWare is going to cert XServe unless Apple subsidizes the effort. You'd think with billions in the bank that wouldn't be a problem, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I don't think it is a priority for them and there is a sizable, "dongle the OS to the hardware" faction inside of Apple.

ESXi "installable" is pretty well neutered though compared to even the Foundation edition, as well as comparing it to XenServer. But that's another thread altogether.

Given that you can only buy an XServe with a Mac OS X license I can' see how you loose that license because you wipe the disk and resinstall the same OS with the OS recovery disk that Apple gave you. If your hard drive dies and you put in a new one did you loose your Mac OS X server license. nope.
What is the difference? You bought the license and it is running on Apple labeled hardware. What are the other requirements to meet put forward by Apple? For your 2nd , 3rd copy you bought those too presumably. Again where is the disconnect in the licensing terms?

As long as all the servers in your virtual machine cluster are all Apple labeled hardware and you bought as many as the maximum copies of VMs you create and run (i.e. images that aren't purely backups images). Where is the disconnect?

Doesn't microsoft make folks buy each copy of the OS also? Isn't stopping that from running on ESX.

You're correct; but I don't want to run the VM'd version of OS X on top of OS X on an X Serve.....too inefficient. I want a bare metal hypervisor running OS X vm's.

And MS allows unlimited VM's of 2008 on an individual machine, provided you buy Data Center edition, IIRC. Then again that's a $6000 license.

Cromulent

Apr 8, 2009, 04:59 PM

How is this a web hosting provider situation when you put your own hardware in a locked down colo location at the site and host's job is solely to provide internet bandwidth , power , and cold air?

It is now YOUR box (or boxes). All the host is doing is aggregating the ultility providers into a single bill. That is not providing dedicated machines , there is no machine and/or sysadmin services there at all. Maybe you get a cheaper deal somehow by leasing the box through them (could happen is they have a better bulk rate relationship with the hardware vendors ). So perhaps technically don't "own" the box. But the "host" isn't doing much in that case with the box itself.

That is a separate issue. It does not change the fact that many websites (this one included I would assume) are hosted on one or more dedicated servers they rent from a web host.

Ecommerce sites require seperate rules that I have already linked too.

Just check out this forum for dedicated server information: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2

Sehnsucht

Apr 9, 2009, 02:00 AM

Wonder if one of them [Dell server] was just put together on Friday afternoon.

Friday the 13th during a full moon! That's when some serious ***** goes down you know. :D :D

ricosuave

Apr 9, 2009, 06:12 PM

Does anyone know what size are these SSD's? Are they laptop size or 3.5 to fit in my MacPro?

polaris20

Apr 9, 2009, 06:19 PM

Does anyone know what size are these SSD's? Are they laptop size or 3.5 to fit in my MacPro?

I'd assume they're 2.5".

AidenShaw

Apr 9, 2009, 07:42 PM

I'd assume they're 2.5".

I wouldn't assume that they're anything.

For internal use, there are bare boards with SATA connectors. Room is tight inside a 1U, and there's no value in having the form factor of a 1.8" or 2.5" standard drive. (And Apple might not want you to be able to install a standard laptop drive.)

http://www.supertalent.com/largeImage/6_171_451.jpg

There are also SATA mini-PCIe drives, which plug into to a motherboard connector.

http://www.supertalent.com/largeImage/6_158_437.jpg

The XServe support docs aren't online yet to check for sure.

polaris20

Apr 9, 2009, 10:29 PM

I wouldn't assume that they're anything.

For internal use, there are bare boards with SATA connectors. Room is tight inside a 1U, and there's no value in having the form factor of a 1.8" or 2.5" standard drive. (And Apple might not want you to be able to install a standard laptop drive.)

http://www.supertalent.com/largeImage/6_171_451.jpg

There are also SATA mini-PCIe drives, which plug into to a motherboard connector.

http://www.supertalent.com/largeImage/6_158_437.jpg

The XServe support docs aren't online yet to check for sure.

That would be why I assumed it was, because the support docs aren't online, and it clearly doesn't go in the 3.5 slots. No need to be rude, Aiden.

polaris20

Apr 9, 2009, 10:35 PM

And yes I realize it could possibly be a PCIe solution, or something else attached directly to the logic board.