Apple Updates Xserve to Nehalem Processors

Just placed my order for an Octo-Serve!

Thanks Apple!

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

Grimace said:

Just placed my order for an Octo-Serve!

Thanks Apple!

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what you using it for?

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?

about time

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.

edesignuk said:

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?

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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.

Evangelion said:

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.

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

Evangelion said:

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.

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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!

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

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.

edesignuk said:

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?

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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.

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themoonisdown09 said:

I believe the SSD is meant for the operating system.

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

is the zero percent financing new?

"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.

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

darrenscerri said:

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

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

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?

edesignuk said:

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

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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

babyjenniferLB said:

"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.

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3gb of ram in a $3000 system?

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

babyjenniferLB said:

"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.

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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.

Sehnsucht said:

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?

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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.

edesignuk said:

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

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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 .

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."

Cromulent said:

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

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Intelligent, that

fleshman03 said:

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.

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