Xserve Discounts - Clearance?

[MacRumors]

rjstanford notes that Apple is running a special for registered ADC developers (Select or above) for 25% off the purchase of two or more Xserve / Xserve RAID systems. These discounts don't count against your normal hardware discounts. This special runs until the end of July.

Due to the recent introduction of the G5 PowerMac, many have speculated that Xserve's are next.

[Nermal]

It makes sense for the Xserve to move to G5, especially for serving things like dynamic web pages. It'll be good to see this happen.

[illumin8]

Originally posted by Macrumors
Due to the recent introduction of the G5 PowerMac, many have speculated that Xserve's are next.

2GB of RAM max in that Xserve doesn't sound quite so good now that 8GB can be had in the G5... IMO, this was always the biggest limitation of the Xserve... 2GB limit on memory. Servers need lots of RAM.

[Freg3000]

G5 xServes at MacWorld Paris, or whatever European city it is in. Mark my words. ( I actually have no idea-just an educated guess.)

[TeraRWM]

http://a400.g.akamai.net/7/400/51/e2...ter_062303.gif



Notice anything special?

Found this on the XCode page halfway down...

EDIT: whoops...I guess I've never seen the cluster version of XServe before..

[MacAztec]

Theres nothing wrong with that, thats just the xServer cluster model from Apple.

[ryan]

Originally posted by MacAztec
Theres nothing wrong with that, thats just the xServer cluster model from Apple.

But compare it to this cluster image on Apple's website. The Xserves in the post above clearly have more ventilation on front.

[fraggle]

Originally posted by ryan
But compare it to this cluster image on Apple's website. The Xserves in the post above clearly have more ventilation on front.

The picture you mention is from a rack of "normal" XServes while the other pictures show a rack of Cluster Nodes. Check a larger pictures on the website, they have only one drive on the left and more room for ventilation.

[ryan]

Originally posted by fraggle
The picture you mention is from a rack of "normal" XServes while the other pictures show a rack of Cluster Nodes. Check a larger pictures on the website, they have only one drive on the left and more room for ventilation.

Ah, interesting, thanks.

[BigJayhawk]

Gee, since the xServes are now "so cheap" why don't we just buy the following for the MacRumors Folding@Home Team?!?

Now THAT should turn out some numbers!!!

[Alexander]

Nononono, you should be buying the first one -- a rack of (mostly) cluster nodes. They have the same processors, but are cheaper because they don't have as much of the other fun stuff.

Get it?

[etoiles]

why are xserve's so expensive ? It is basically a stripped down powermac, so why does it cost more ? I know the design might be a bit more tricky because they have to fit averything into a smaller case, but still...


Anybody knows who is actually buying these machines ?

[rjstanford]

Originally posted by etoiles
why are xserve's so expensive ? It is basically a stripped down powermac, so why does it cost more ? I know the design might be a bit more tricky because they have to fit averything into a smaller case, but still...


Anybody knows who is actually buying these machines ?

Its not actually a stripped down powermac. Fitting 42 powermacs into a 4 square foot space would be an exercise in a) frustration, and b) using your fire extinguisher. In situations where you have a reasonable number of servers, power and heat management becomes much more critical. Maintenance features like the hot-swap drives are nice, if you're not just doing some NAS like the Xserve RAID -- they're not cheap, either. For performance, I don't believe that the older powermacs had independant HD busses, don't come with dual network cards, etc. Much of the extra price is buying you the unlimited-user copy of OS X Server, too.

One thing that annoys me a little about the design is that there's only a single power supply -- I'd be happier with dual redundant ones. Still, that's a pretty minor defect since for high-availability production use people are still opting for the more solid IBMs, HPs, and Suns. Hopefully the next rev of the hardware will bring it up to a real production level. Even if not, with G5s this will make a very nice, very cheap development server.

-Richard

[etoiles]

ok
my main application being CG I was looking at it as a rendernode rather than a server, I guess. And rendernodes tend to be cheaper than full workstations because you get rid of fancy graphic cards, epansion slots, optical drives etc. and don't need super highspeed networking

I want a rendernode !
(I know, I can always buy a bunch of cheap PC's to do the slavework )

[rjstanford]

Originally posted by etoiles
ok
my main application being CG I was looking at it as a rendernode rather than a server, I guess. And rendernodes tend to be cheaper than full workstations because you get rid of fancy graphic cards, epansion slots, optical drives etc. and don't need super highspeed networking

You want the Cluster Node, then. You lose three of the drive bays, and one of the GigE ports, and gain a 2nd processor for the same price as the single processor Xserve. Oh, and your OS drops to 10 user, rather than unlimited (only applies to use as a fileserver, IIRC).

-Richard

[Pete_Hoover]

I can see them putting a G5 in an xserve next. If only they could put a low-powered, less heat version in other coumputers. Then I might be able to afford a computer with a g5.

[panphage]

Imagine the fun of a rack of clustered G5's with the Xcode distributed builds. Whee! I think we'd have a new winner for kernel compile time.