Xserve RAID and Xserve Updates

[MacRumors]

Apple introduced two new products today:

Dual 1.33GHz Xserve with Firewire 800
Xserve RAID - $5999

[Dunepilot]

It's about time for an upgrade. Hopefully the xserve's dismal sales may take off now...?:(

[ntg]

look nice - I've been waiting to buy, too....

[Moxiemike]

Man, at this rate, we'll be seeing updated 17" AlBooks before the rev a's ship! ;)

nice products, the new Xserve is. Tempting for me to get one for Audio and such. Nice price. :)

Xraid looks like some weird Metal mouth.... veru ominous. Just like big business. haha

[jamilecrire]

I was wondering when this would be posted.

Looks cool, once Oracle goes gold I may have to pick one of these up.

[Dunepilot]

Oh yeah, this is the first time we've seen this speed of G4 (1.33) also.

Is it a new version of the chip, or just a 7455?

[kidtronix]

why not 1.42Ghz?

[paulie]

or just straight out of left field??

How is Apple's server division doing in the marketplace anyway?? Sure, I'd love an Xserve to host my website, but...

*boggle*.. 2.52 TB.. :o

[iSmell]

I want one.

(just because)

[Mr. Anderson]

Wow, that's a lot of bytes! One RAID can hold up to 2.52 Terabytes and this little rack is 12.6 Terabytes! Can't imagine needing that much, but it still looks good.

I wondering why they're not offering the 1.42 G4s, though....

D

[Mr. Anderson]

Forgot the pic.

[RowdyBacon]

Originally posted by dukestreet
Wow, that's a lot of bytes! One RAID can hold up to 2.52 Terabytes and this little rack is 12.6 Terabytes! Can't imagine needing that much, but it still looks good.

I wondering why they're not offering the 1.42 G4s, though....

D

Two possibilities regarding the 1.42 G4s. Either they have a limited supply of them at the moment, and have decided to prioritize them for the Power Macs. Or, they generate too much heat for the Xserve's form factor.

[cc bcc]

The price for a 180 GB drive is $500! That's insane..

[Knox]

180GB drive modules I notice, up from the 120GBs before.

$11k for 2.5TB storage seems like a good price to me although I'm not exactly in the market for one so haven't been looking ;)

Interestingly, talking about the G4s being 1.33Ghz, Motorola just announced 1.3Ghz embedded PPC7457s today - http://www.geekstreet.ca/article.php?sid=1253. I wonder if it's related.

[gotohamish]

Originally posted by RowdyBacon


Two possibilities regarding the 1.42 G4s. Either they have a limited supply of them at the moment, and have decided to prioritize them for the Power Macs. Or, they generate too much heat for the Xserve's form factor.

[irmongoose]

Originally posted by cc bcc
The price for a 180 GB drive is $500! That's insane..

These sweet babies are meant for people who can afford those kind of things... meaning that if you can't afford 'em, you shouldn't be gettin one :cool:

Apple is definitely on a roll here, eh? Don't they want to save some annoucements for later? :p And don't say 'That's the way it should be' :rolleyes: ...




irmongoose

[imaswitcheryeah]

:rolleyes:

Why no 1.42's, you ask?

They're too hot for a 1U rack.
Reliability in these servers are as high-priority as sheer performance in these servers, if not a higher-priority. A slow, reliable server is worth a lot more to an administrator than a super-fast, unreliable server. Think about it.

Word.

[MacCoaster]

Originally posted by Knox
180GB drive modules I notice, up from the 120GBs before.

$11k for 2.5TB storage seems like a good price to me although I'm not exactly in the market for one so haven't been looking ;)

Interestingly, talking about the G4s being 1.33Ghz, Motorola just announced 1.3Ghz embedded PPC7457s today - http://www.geekstreet.ca/article.php?sid=1253. I wonder if it's related.
I think you're right on target. Why? Because of the link you gave us. It said:
Pricing and Availability

Alpha samples of the MPC7457 and MPC7447 PowerPC processors are available today to selected customers. General market sampling is planned for March, with production expected to commence in Q4 2003. Suggested retail pricing for the MPC7457 at 1 GHz is expected to be $189 (USD) in quantities of 10,000.
and shopping for the Xserve, I get:
http://www.digitizedweb.com/LateMarch.gif

Very likely it is the 7457.

[kwajo.com]

i think it's great that they changed alot more than just the speed. Firewire 800, slotload drive (not really better), optional Combo drive, etc. . . It also has a cleaner look thanks to the removal or a couple gaps in the front panel (if you don't remember what the old one was like, check out apple.ca until they update it). good update, and RAID, the scary thing is that MacOSRumors were right .. . .*gasp*

[Knox]

Originally posted by cc bcc
The price for a 180 GB drive is $500! That's insane..

At first glance it is, but remember -

1) It's 180GB. A WD 180GB drive is $275 or so
2) It's hot swapable - you could pay an extra $100 to get this, which brings the price to about $400
3) It's Apple, so you add on a premium.

Bear in mind that to get a 140GB hot-swap SCSI drive is over $1200, so $500 isn't that bad in comparison.

(I was only checking quickly for prices in the US, so they won't be the cheapest available)

[QuiteSure]

Originally posted by Dunepilot
Hopefully the xserve's dismal sales may take off now...?:(

I understand that the xserve has 1.2% of the market. Mac sales are only about 2-3x that. For a product that's been out less than 1 yr, 1.2% seems pretty good.

[arnold2]

There's more...

Download the spec PDF and have a good look at the detail:

ATA/133 Apple Drive Module (7200 rpm)
(instead of ATA/100)

64-bit, 66MHz PCI slots
(instead of 33MHz)

So, like the first Xserve, this is giving us a taste of the PowerMacs for summer release - the 7457 will run from 867 to 1.833GHz.

Perhaps the NEXT Xserve will have the IBM 970 ?

[arnold2]

Oh no, it's not the MPC7457....

[arnold2]

I just checked Motorola's site -
http://e-www.motorola.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=MPC7457&nodeId=018rH3bTdG8653

The on-chip cache is listed as 512K - twice the size of the MPC7455.

If the Apple Xserver PDF is correct, it lists the L2 at 256K.

erm...

[Dunepilot]

I can't find the link where I read this last week, but apprently uptake of the XServe has been quite a way below Apple's expectations. It's not that surprising, given that the RAID hasn't been ready until now.



Originally posted by QuiteSure


I understand that the xserve has 1.2% of the market. Mac sales are only about 2-3x that. For a product that's been out less than 1 yr, 1.2% seems pretty good.

[yzedf]

Where is the SCSI? If I need 2+ terabytes of storage, I think I would want it to be fast... no?

*sigh*

Yet another cool idea that is lacking in some of the "must have" details.

[BackCheck]

could almost be used as a stand alone desktop!!

I might be in the very small minority, but I would prefer a desktop form a la my Beige G3. All the 1U Xserve needs is a SuperDrive and it could be used as an (expensive) desktop model!!

Otherwise a very appetising update!

[springscansing]

It can handle over 200MB/sec using ATA drives. Is SCSI really necessary?

That isn't a retorical question, I honestly don't know. Is that fast enough?

[crassusad44]

Originally posted by yzedf
Where is the SCSI? If I need 2+ terabytes of storage, I think I would want it to be fast... no?

*sigh*

Yet another cool idea that is lacking in some of the "must have" details.

SCSI is not "must have" any more. And the way the Xserve works, with ATA/133, it's actually faster than SCSI based servers. AND, ATA is much cheaper...

[MacCoaster]

Originally posted by arnold2
I just checked Motorola's site -
http://e-www.motorola.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=MPC7457&nodeId=018rH3bTdG8653

The on-chip cache is listed as 512K - twice the size of the MPC7455.

If the Apple Xserver PDF is correct, it lists the L2 at 256K.

erm...
You're right.

/me eats my foot. Should have remembered about double the L2.

[yzedf]

Originally posted by crassusad44


SCSI is not "must have" any more. And the way the Xserve works, with ATA/133, it's actually faster than SCSI based servers. AND, ATA is much cheaper...

From my experience with SCSI and IDE drives, I would want SCSI just for the reliability.

Remember the big row a few months ago when most companies (including IBM, WD, Seagate, Hitachi etc) started reducing IDE warranties from 3yr to 1yr?

I am supposed to trust these inferior (reliability wise) drives for mission critical server work?

What is the point if I have to keep swapping out dead drives every month after the first 14-18 months?

[bones]

Dude, this is a great deal. I highly, highly doubt the drives are at all unreliable. Besides, its fully redundant - and the PRICE is 3X less than the comparable DELL offering.

Top XServe RAID - $10,999
DELL EMC CX200 (http://news.com.com/2100-1001-963519.html) - $30000

Apple's comparison chart is here (http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/).


Throw in a (couple!) XServes, and you are still way below the price of just DELL's storage!

[trebblekicked]

i'm not in the market for an xserve, but i am debating how to backup my DVD masters/vid projects. i was considering the cheap-o rout (DC'ing an bunch of FW HD's together) but the entry level pricepoint for the raid is affordable. I think this was a good release. I look to buy around the time they will actually ship (late march? is that the best guess?)

My experience with ATA has been more than acceptable. I don't miss SCSI, really.

[Sayer]

Apple discusses the "whys" of Xserve RAID design in the various product web pages. Go read them instead of sitting on MacRumors.com scratching your head and posting questions to a forum full of people equally as uninformed about a brand new product as you are.

[Longey Nowze]

what do think? maybe that's why they didn't use SCSI maybe they're waiting for the second gen or maybe even the third? cuz I read somewhere that the first gen isn't going to have much of a perfomance boost...

this great! apple has updating everything except the iBooks and the iPods... so i guess we'll have to wait till next week :p this is good! GO APPLE!

THANK YOU
MaT

[yzedf]

Originally posted by Sayer
Apple discusses the "whys" of Xserve RAID design in the various product web pages. Go read them instead of sitting on MacRumors.com scratching your head and posting questions to a forum full of people equally as uninformed about a brand new product as you are.

PR trash is not helpful. real facts are.

fact - most IDE drives now come with 1yr warranty.

fact - as prices have dropped, so have reliability.

fact - servers are all about reliability

fact - speed is not most important feature of a server

fact - every other release apple has done in the near past that has been delayed has had problems within days of release. (both hardware and software)

fact - expectations of a server are much harsher than that of a shiny little notebook.

this may be why the sales of this machine, in the past, have not been what apple expected/wanted. this is the land of reliability. uptime here is measured not in days or hours... but months.

3rd quarter (calendar year) sales shall show us if this new product is up to snuff.

i merely point out why many may choose not to purchase this right now. if it is good, and the facts bear this out in 6-12 months, then apple might have an unqualified success on their hands. as of right now, they do not.

time will tell.

IMNSHO, YMMV.

[GPTurismo]

I am really disappointed it used ATA. ATA is merely half duplex, and in major applications you need the drives to be able to read and write at the same time for maximum speed.

It's a good lower to possibly mid range server.

BTW, When did Hitachi and IBM's Hard Drive Division merge? Did this just happen or did I miss it?

GPT

[GPTurismo]

Originally posted by yzedf
fact - expectations of a server are much harsher than that of a shiny little notebook.

I have to agree whole heartedly with this comment.

People just don't understand why servers are so different, and if they have never doen any high end apps like large oracle databases or large centralized file share systems they never really will :\

[yzedf]

Originally posted by GPTurismo
BTW, When did Hitachi and IBM's Hard Drive Division merge? Did this just happen or did I miss it?

It has been a while. Initial plans in April... then this a few months later:

http://www.ibm.com/news/us/2002/06/033.html

[pilotgi]

Apple's website says the XServe has the fastest bus speeds ever.

Weren't they already at 167 MHz?

[sparkleytone]

is it just me or does this statement seem to have alot of power hidden behind it?? its almost scary :D

[vniow]

Originally posted by sparkleytone
is it just me or does this statement seem to have alot of power hidden behind it?? its almost scary :D


Just a teeny bit.

[GPTurismo]

Originally posted by yzedf


It has been a while. Initial plans in April... then this a few months later:

http://www.ibm.com/news/us/2002/06/033.html

Well Crap. IBM will probably start up a new HDD division in 5 years once the economy picks back up :(

Damn, and IBM made some of my favorite drives too.

[yzedf]

Originally posted by GPTurismo


Well Crap. IBM will probably start up a new HDD division in 5 years once the economy picks back up :(

Damn, and IBM made some of my favorite drives too.

AFAIK they are only getting rid of the basic IDE stuff. If you like their other stuff... you may be in luck.

They are still doing R&D on hdd, so we may be ok.

It was the DeskStar line that seems to have pushed them over the edge... :(

[nuckinfutz]

Now keep in Mind the Xserve has dedicated controllers for each pair of drives. ATA's Half Duplex limitation can be ameliorated somewhat by having seperate controllers for each drive or pair of drives. Since the controllers are much cheaper than the comparable SCSI controllers you're still ahead.

[Freg3000]

Originally posted by sparkleytone
is it just me or does this statement seem to have alot of power hidden behind it?? its almost scary :D

I am happy to be scared. :)

Apple is on a role. I like this every Tuesday update thing. How about....next week iPods.....and Feb. 24 new iBooks? :D

[MhzDoesMatter]

Originally posted by yzedf


PR trash is not helpful. real facts are.

fact - most IDE drives now come with 1yr warranty.

fact - as prices have dropped, so have reliability.

fact - servers are all about reliability

fact - speed is not most important feature of a server

fact - every other release apple has done in the near past that has been delayed has had problems within days of release. (both hardware and software)

fact - expectations of a server are much harsher than that of a shiny little notebook.

this may be why the sales of this machine, in the past, have not been what apple expected/wanted. this is the land of reliability. uptime here is measured not in days or hours... but months.

3rd quarter (calendar year) sales shall show us if this new product is up to snuff.

i merely point out why many may choose not to purchase this right now. if it is good, and the facts bear this out in 6-12 months, then apple might have an unqualified success on their hands. as of right now, they do not.

time will tell.

IMNSHO, YMMV.


As generally true as your statements may prove to be, they are far from facts. For instance, its your opinion (and probably that of countless others) that the reliability of drives has dropped. And in the rare instance of a liberal use of a server, speed can be the most important factor of a server.

It's just that you came off a little to hardedged and seemed to be basing things off of general truths, not facts.

MhzDoesMatter

[yzedf]

Originally posted by MhzDoesMatter



As generally true as your statements may prove to be, they are far from facts. For instance, its your opinion (and probably that of countless others) that the reliability of drives has dropped. And in the rare instance of a liberal use of a server, speed can be the most important factor of a server.

It's just that you came off a little to hardedged and seemed to be basing things off of general truths, not facts.

MhzDoesMatter

When the warranty issue came up, I had a very long talk with a sys admin friend of mine who is very much the hardware guru. He is young enough to not be overly nostalgic for "the good old days" yet realistic enough to see the differences over time.

RAM seems to be better, and cheaper. Not nearly the number of duds that there used to be.

HDD are faster, bigger, quiter (mostly), and more likely to break. Most of the drives in his domain are of the small 2gig variety. They have turned out to be slow, quiet, and safe. The newer whiz bang fast drives have been far more prone to failures (of the rattling ball bearing in a can kind). Even tried buying slower new drives. They were better than the fast drives, but worse than the older stuff.

My personal experience with cheapo drives through the years has been fairly consistent; they all suck.

Nearly every IDE hdd on the market is not designed for 24/7 use. They tend to fail, in a big way.

I hope this is not what is in the xserves. Apples customers do deserve better. They expect good quality hard/soft ware... and they pay for it.

Best of luck.

:)

[MrMacMan]

Is it just my Attention to Details or is

Mac OS X Server 10.2.4 Not out yet?

I might just have to make another topic out of this...
http://a720.g.akamai.net/7/720/51/2f176ec09c3e24/www.apple.com/xserve/images/managementshot_020903.gif

Whoops apple slipped... I mean software update doesn't show anything for me... hm...

The 1.42 GHZ are just too hot right now to be running in those. Look at the rack the heat would spread and they would all melt into one big metal clump. :(

Ouch.

[GPTurismo]

So you have 14 drives, and you can only read or write to each one. So the problem there lies that if you can't read from a drive to get the final part of a file or even the first part because it is writing you slow down, who cares you can write or read from all the drives simultaneously if they can only do one at a time...

all i can say is CHEAP LOW END SOLUTION

:(

At least as desktops apples really kick booty :D

[edenwaith]

Wow, that was fairly unexpected. There were some rumors that the new Xserve would be coming out in a few weeks, but when I saw Apple today, there were the machines! Wow, how many new products is that in just the past month? Apple did a pretty good job in keeping this release quiet, too.

As for the Xserves get 1.33 GHz chips, it is probably due to the amount of heat the chips give off and how well the units can dissipate the heat (otherwise, it might be an Xblob). I haven't seen an Xserve before, but don't they get pretty loud due to the fans and how they have to push the heat out of the unit?

But certainly nice to see a RAID now. Don't need one, but if I had a business, it would certainly be a nice added tool. Or perhaps even better, get several 1U units, and perform a RAID through those, just in case one of the machines goes down, the others are still there.

[MacKid]

Originally posted by arnold2
There's more...

Download the spec PDF and have a good look at the detail:

ATA/133 Apple Drive Module (7200 rpm)
(instead of ATA/100)

64-bit, 66MHz PCI slots
(instead of 33MHz)

So, like the first Xserve, this is giving us a taste of the PowerMacs for summer release - the 7457 will run from 867 to 1.833GHz.

Perhaps the NEXT Xserve will have the IBM 970 ?

Naturally;)

[Scott Laird]

Originally posted by GPTurismo
So you have 14 drives, and you can only read or write to each one. So the problem there lies that if you can't read from a drive to get the final part of a file or even the first part because it is writing you slow down, who cares you can write or read from all the drives simultaneously if they can only do one at a time...

all i can say is CHEAP LOW END SOLUTION


Oh, no. Another SCSI bigot. Sigh.

Look, IDE's not that bad anymore. From a transfer rate standpoint, it's similar to SCSI; the newest drives for each take turns outrunning each other, but no one really cares once you start doing RAID--even 4 drives will push over 200 MB/sec, and that's too big of a firehose for most small servers to keep up with for any extended period of time.

What really matters, generally, is the number of small, random I/O operations that the drive can perform per second, and that's mostly a function of rotation speed and seek time. Traditionally, SCSI has been quite a ways ahead of IDE on this front, but the lead is dropping. Plus, IDE's painfully cheap price per disk means that you can ususally afford 2-3x as many drives for the same money, which will usually negate SCSI's random I/O lead. Plus, newer IDE drives are adding things like tagged queueing (which the Xraid drives probably support) which should boost IDE drives up to about the same speed as SCSI drives with the same rotational speed. Plus, the next generation of IDE drives will be pushing 10k RPM, the same speed as most SCSI drives and only one notch below the fastest 15k RPM drives.

So, in another year or so, IDE will be approaching drive-for-drive parity with SCSI. Right now, it's slower per drive, but it's so much cheaper that you can probably get better overall performance for the same money.

The half-duplex thing is a complete myth. No currently shipping drive can read and write at the same time. Almost all SCSI drives and some newer IDE drives can accept write requests while read requests are outstanding, and vice-versa, but you don't want to use this feature with writes unless you have a battery backup on your RAID controller, because it will cause corruption on power loss.

That leaves reliability--traditionally SCSI drives have been more reliable then IDE drives. In a decent RAID, though, this doesn't matter much. You just design the system with hot spares and plan for drive failures. Have a cold spare or two around to swap in for failed drives and you should be able to keep running even with an improbably high failure rate. It doesn't matter if you're using IDE or SCSI--if your data matters, then you REALLY need to understand what happens when things start failing, because it's going to happen, it's just a matter of time, and the unemployment list is just as long for SCSI users as IDE :(.

[MrMacMan]

Does no one care about 10.2.4 ???

AHHH!!

[barfoo]

Originally posted by Scott Laird
[B]
Look, IDE's not that bad anymore. From a transfer rate standpoint, it's similar to SCSI; the newest drives for each take turns outrunning each other, but no one really cares once you start doing RAID--even 4 drives will push over 200 MB/sec, and that's too big of a firehose for most small servers to keep up with for any extended period of time.


Right-o. Also keep in mind several things:

1) Xserve RAID can have up to 1GB of cache. That helps tremendously (What do you think has kept EMC in business all these years?)

2) Fibre Channel provided 200mb/sec *per port* to the Xserve. Being that it has 2 ports, I wonder what it would take to load-balance on the host side (similar to Veritas' DMP or Sun's MPxIO or HPaq's SecurePath)...

What really matters, generally, is the number of small, random I/O operations that the drive can perform per second, and that's mostly a function of rotation speed and seek time. Traditionally, SCSI has been quite a ways ahead of IDE on this front, but the lead is dropping. Plus, IDE's painfully cheap price per disk means that you can ususally afford 2-3x as many drives for the same money, which will usually negate SCSI's random I/O lead.


That doesn't matter nearly as much anymore. First and foremost, if you use this thing with a RAID5 setup, you're nuts. RAID0+1 or even RAID10 is a better option -- RAID5 is just going to hamper performance....

The only place I can see RAID5 being useful is when you only have So Many Disks (tm) to work with --- in something like this, with 2.5TB in 3U of space, there's no need for it ...

Secondly, that big-old-cache in front of the drives is a major help....

What we all need to remember is that the enterprise storage game looks _absolutely nothing_ like desktop storage! Nothing at all!

This is a wholly different beast .... I can't wait to get ours so we can play with it at work ....

I was thinking of hooking up an HP Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) to an Xserve just to see if it works ... now that apple sells a "supported" Fibre channel card, I can go for it!

--barfoo

[scem0]

Originally posted by MrMacman
Does no one care about 10.2.4 ???

AHHH!!

not really, not in a thread that doesn't have anything to do with
Mac OS 10.2.4. Feel free to start another thread if you feel it is
necessary.

These are really nice, I would have liked the rack to be a bit faster,
but I guess it isn't all that bad. A mediocre update if you ask me.

[springscansing]

Originally posted by Scott Laird


Oh, no. Another SCSI bigot. Sigh.

Seriously.

[edenwaith]

From my own personal experience, I've had pretty good luck with IDE drives, they have tended to be the last thing to stick around on some systems I've had. On a junker PC I had, close to everything died on it within two or three years. I think that drive might still work, but it is a 'paltry' 2 GB, so it doesn't do me tons of good in a system now, especially compared up to 60 GB drives.

But on Macs in general, I've had tons better luck with hardware, not just being compatible, but just sticking around and working for awhile. On all of my Macs, the only problems I've ever had have been with CD drives, and that's it.

[GPTurismo]

Another scsi bigot?

Look, ATA is fine for workstations and laptops. But for a server environment? Maybe for a small file server. The thing is is that apple is trying to put this up to a high end solution or even a mid range solution and it doesn't cut the mustard.

The main thing is cost, when a G4's biggest advantage is altivec, and that is primarly used in the GUI, why do you need that in a server?

Maybe when they go to a newer 64 bit archetecture, but even then I know of a lot of oracle dba's and other mid range up solution providers that would scoff at the xserve, due to the fact you can get an IBM x330 with dual p3's for $1500 and it will stomp the hell out of that xserve running oracle and/or a web server with linux. :(

Then the EXP 300 is cheaper than the Xraid and it's scsi, sure the drives aren't as large, and are a little more expensive, but for reliability and everything else it's worth it and you will have the extra cash from from the server to buythe extra HDDs.

If you are setting up an internal file server, with under 150 users, and you wanted to maybe host your intranet on it and cash wasn't a problem go Xserve.

But with OSX supporting NFS, and Linux having netatalk and samba, you can get a good linux box cheaper and have all your macs connect to it.

:(

Reality sucks :(

[Prom1]

Forget the current technology of ATA/133 or 150, I'm really hoping for SERIAL ATA which begins at 150MB/s up to 600MB/second data transfer for read/write internally in the drive itself.

Now If i'm not mistaking isnt the SCSI technology capable of reaching 360MB/second? Either in the LVD or Ultra LVD or another spec??? And no I'm not just talking about whats currently available for the MAC but also for PC??

Glad about the XRaid and the fibre channel.....is the fibre channel really just the FireWire2 port connections???
Can somebody post a pic on the actually connectors?

Peace.

[Scott Laird]

Originally posted by Prom1
Forget the current technology of ATA/133 or 150, I'm really hoping for SERIAL ATA which begins at 150MB/s up to 600MB/second data transfer for read/write internally in the drive itself.

Doesn't matter. Even Ultra 66 is fast enough for a single drive, and Ultra 100 or 133 is fast enough for another year or two. There are three reasons for this:

1. The fastest drives are around 60 MB/sec right now.

2. 4 drives at 60 MB/sec are faster then 200 MB/sec FC.

3. The only common application that needs I/O rates this high is uncompressed HDTV editing/capture. Remember, it'll take multiple gigabit ethernet pipes to feed 200 MB/sec to a server. In real life, random I/O almost always matters more.

The real-life performance difference between 14 drives, each via a 60 MB/sec connection and 14 drives, each via a 600 MB/sec connection is freakishly close to 0.

Having said that, Serial ATA has a number of nice things going for it (smaller cables and connectors, standard support for hot-swap), but 150 vs 300 vs 600 is irrelevant for single drives in a RAID array.


Now If i'm not mistaking isnt the SCSI technology capable of reaching 360MB/second? Either in the LVD or Ultra LVD or another spec??? And no I'm not just talking about whats currently available for the MAC but also for PC??

Yep, Ultra320 is currently the fastest standard. Remember two things, though:

1. You almost always put more then one drive on each SCSI bus, so they have to share.

2. SCSI is frequently used to connect hosts and RAID arrays, so higher performance actually matters at lot more then performance on single IDE channels.

Having said that, a single Ultra320 channel pretty much needs a 64/66 PCI bus to itself if you plan on getting full speed out of it.


Glad about the XRaid and the fibre channel.....is the fibre channel really just the FireWire2 port connections???


Totally unrelated. The standard copper FC connector looks kind of like a mutant RJ-45 as I recall. Older copper connectors typically used DB-9 connectors, although it's actually possible to run FC over coax, if you have the right coax.

[markseaton]

"because it's going to happen, it's just a matter of time, and the unemployment list is just as long for SCSI users as IDE ."

Have you all forgot about S.M.A.R.T

All the ide drives support this and it's what makes them more relible now then a few years back, it monitors the condition of the drive and gives you realtime feed back about the disk, so you pull it out before it dies giving you 100% protection becouse it's be replaced before it dies in your server!

at a place i know that uses servers the have about 5 hp servers with about 600gigs a server they still have a tape drive to back them up and they are like 60 pounds not including the UPS power that only last for like 20 min, and they way as much or more!, they have there own airconed room that mesures like 14x14ft! with apples new xserve you could fit it in a closet!

As for speed what more do you want it to do cook your dinner!

:)

[markseaton]

sorry for all the mistakes i was in a rush

[Prom1]

Details ppl.

Fibre Channel for use with the PowerMac G4? No I say, Why??

If you read the PDF's for the XServe Raid and the XServe, and the PowerMac G4 (1.42Ghz or any others). You'll see what I'm talking about.

Fibre Channel PCI card requires 64/32-bit 66Mhz PCI slot according to the XServeRaid PDF (Feb 2003); which both the XServes have, but the PowerMac G4's, ALL in existence, only have 32-bit/64-bit (64-bit for the 1.42Ghz model) 33Mhz PCI slots. On page 3 of the XServe RAID pdf under the heading Apple Fibre Channel PCI Card (sold seperately), it states 64-bit 66Mhz dual SFP 2Gb Fibre Channel ports compatible with 32-bit 66Mhz PCI slots. (order #8940G/A).

So what gives with the picture of the PowerMac using a RAID???

ScottLaird,
Thanks for the info but in setting up RAID drives 1 and up I do believe random access for hosting or even applications for Excel databases--huge sheets of info......ATA 100/133 would benefit even the average user. point in case is the XServe actually using them. Serial ATA which is being built by Seagate, not sure whom makes the PCI card for them actually would help the consumer but not by leaps and bounds I agree.

Cheers