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Apple Rackmount Event

robguz

Wow, you guys need to relax, its obviously a joke. Man, This is one etherial machine and all haters can stuff it. Sometimes I think none of you will be happy untill Apple just gives you next decades powermacs for free and Jobs comes over to wash your car.

This is a killer system. Live with it, or buy something else. Intelligent people tend to buy Macs, now inelligent dmins can too.
 
Re: robguz

Originally posted by drastik
Wow, you guys need to relax, its obviously a joke. Man, This is one etherial machine and all haters can stuff it. Sometimes I think none of you will be happy untill Apple just gives you next decades powermacs for free and Jobs comes over to wash your car.
Click to expand...

Wait a minute... car detailing? I want one. Maybe this summer huh?
 
How to live in a small world

Interesting quotes, reiterating why Xserve is a bargain, and showing a very Buddhist-like Jobs (from The Register):


"We are humble, we know we have a lot to learn," said Jobs, sounding as humble as he possible could."

"But Apple made as much of OS X Server's unlimited user license at the launch today. With a 25-user client license for a Windows server costing $3295, the price of an entry level Wintel rack can double."
 
Re: Wait a second...

Originally posted by robguz
I've been longing for a replacement for my original iMac so I can play Bugdom faster and this is all Apple comes up with. It doesn't even have a screen and my iMac costed 1299 while this ugly thing is almost $3000! Can't it at least come with a round mouse like I'm used to? And what's all this stuff about a server? I don't want my iMac to serve anything, well maybe toast every once in a while would be nice. I just want to be able to get on AOL and free those poor ladybugs in Bugdom. Apple is ruining my life!
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Two words for you there Bubba... 'Bugger OFF!!!'.

The Xserve is not supposed to replace your ancient iMac. It a server damnit. Put DOWN the ganja and read ya mook.
 
my overall impression

The most impressive piece of this new rack server is the price and the feature set. I believe that Apple has a clear idea of its target market. Its not shooting for the top end of server market segments.

As for the server itself, frankly, I see it as a modest piece of technology. It is not cutting edge. But that's okay because most enerprises want reliability and proven technologies as much as they want performance.

I just wish that we would have seen something in the way of Rapid I/O and/or HyperTransport with main memory speeds faster than 266 Mhz.

As for the clustering capability of the system, I'd say its good for distributed computing but not so great for clustering. The clustering limitation is limited to Gigabit Ethernet, albeit two ports each blade. A pair of G4's can overwhelm a Gigabit Ethernet connection easily. If apple also had some kind of a switch fabric blade for clustering these servers together that would make it really good clustering solution. SETI works fine because its computations are divided prior to computation initiation.

What does this bode for the PM? Modest improvement with just DDR? Hmmm? I'll save this one for another thread.

Eirik
 
Originally posted by Backtothemac


Those of us, that are in lust right now....

We need towels.... Awww, there is a blue light special at K-Mart on towels....How many do we need?
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More then I can afford to get at this point... I'm about ready to convert my office into a pool... 😀
 
Re: Re: No SCSI

Originally posted by eric_n_dfw

I, generally agree, but Apple is quick to point out that having 4 separate controllers provides more bandwitch than SCSI160. Also, I'd venture to guess that, even though SCSI is multi-threaded, having 4 controllers is kind-of-like have a 4-threaded controller. (Okay, I'm stretching my knowledge hardware now!)
Click to expand...

I agree that this is faster than a single U160 controller, but a lot of servers, even some of the 1U ones have dual U160 controllers on it. This is all theoretical though throughput though, and while a 7 15k RPM drives can easily saturate a single controller, that is not the case 'often' and if it is, you wouldn't be using a 1U server with limited i/o, you would go right to fiber or something similar.

This also gets around the major problem with IDE/ATA drives by dedicating one controller per drive, that way you don't run into the issue of having multiple commands 'commendering' the bus. I think this is a very cost effective way to get alot of high performance storage at a reasonable price.

Good point, I did not know about the peer-to-peer "smarts" either. However, with modern ATA aka UDMA controllers, less CPU is needed than most people think.
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The modern ATA controllers are pretty good, and depending on how they are implemented can be VERY close in CPU load to a SCSI controller. I don't think SCSI in general is easier on the CPU, but most adaptec cards or better have a CPU on the card to handle the i/o so the CPU doesn't, while most ATA controllers do not. That is why an good standard adaptec single channel card is still $300 and a ata/133 card is 75...

BTW, this thing is pretty sweet! 🙂
 
.48 TB? I don't think so. Guess that was a closer # to .5 which is half. Really it's closer to 4.69, but I guess I'm the only one who cares. 🙂
 
Originally posted by mc68k
.48 TB? I don't think so. Guess that was a closer # to .5 which is half. Really it's closer to 4.69, but I guess I'm the only one who cares. 🙂
Click to expand...

Ok, simple math lesson.. Four 120GB hard drives inside... total space= 480GB

Actual usable space will vary.

I wonder if the Xserve will use all of 160GB hard drives space. If it can, that would max it out at 640GB... *drool*
 
Re: Re: Re: No SCSI

Originally posted by TypeR389
I agree that this is faster than a single U160 controller, but a lot of servers, even some of the 1U ones have dual U160 controllers on it.
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Only if you are willing to pay extra for them. I checked out what IBM offers, and the SCSI controllers are extra, as are the hard drives (which max out at 75GB).
 
Originally posted by AlphaTech
I wonder if the Xserve will use all of 160GB hard drives space. If it can, that would max it out at 640GB... *drool*
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Guess it all depends on the software on the XServe. The controllers are advanced enough. Does X Server have the GB limit?

Wonder if it's pronounced "ex-serv" or "ten-serv"?
 
Originally posted by AlphaTech


Ok, simple math lesson.. Four 120GB hard drives inside... total space= 480GB

Actual usable space will vary.

I wonder if the Xserve will use all of 160GB hard drives space. If it can, that would max it out at 640GB... *drool*
Click to expand...

Actually he's right because of the 1024 not 1000 thing. But man that's really nitpicky, and since the rest of the tech world tends to fudge on this one, I don't think apple's really being dishonest.
 
I read on another site that was a reaser for another product. Good job Apple-thanks for releasing a rack mount server
 
RAID info

Just found this in the description of the extra Xserve's drive modules (under Storage on the Apple online store).

Mac OS X Server includes AppleRAID, providing RAID 0 and 1 support through software, allowing you to increase either data redundancy or performance. Xserve is able to boot from RAID volumes. Choose any combination of mirroring or striping across the four drive bays, but all RAID configurations require a minimum of two ADM hard drives
Click to expand...

With that backing up what I said earlier about the built-in RAID support of OS X (also present in the client version), it makes the Xserve even better.
 
DDR???

Originally posted by Backtothemac
Well, so much for all of those that said the G4 couldn't support DDR....
Click to expand...

I've been one of the people saying this all along and I stick by it. Motorola's documentation clearly states that the bus interface is 133MHz and the current G4s can only transfer data once per clock cycle - therefore although you could plug in DDR RAM, the CPU can't read the data that fast.

So the question is - how is Apple taking advantage of DDR? I called a couple of people I know in Apple engineering and they refuse to talk about it. Anyone else have any info?
 
Re: DDR???

Originally posted by gbojim


....I called a couple of people I know in Apple engineering and they refuse to talk about it. Anyone else have any info?
Click to expand...

Take them out, get them drunk!!!

😎
 
Re: DDR???

Originally posted by gbojim
I've been one of the people saying this all along and I stick by it. Motorola's documentation clearly states that the bus interface is 133MHz and the current G4s can only transfer data once per clock cycle - therefore although you could plug in DDR RAM, the CPU can't read the data that fast.

So the question is - how is Apple taking advantage of DDR? I called a couple of people I know in Apple engineering and they refuse to talk about it. Anyone else have any info?
Click to expand...
Maybe it's a new G4 chip. Not the 7455. Motorola tends to keep things quiet so as not to steal Apple's thunder.

Can someone explain to me about the various system busses? I see that Intel/AMD has 400mhz and 533mhz and such. What does that actually mean?

Would the new Xserve be considered a 266mhz bus (assuming that it does take advantage of DDR)?
 
Bus/CPU speed issue.

this phrase in the coverage caught my eye: "System controller with custom ASIC done by Apple".

Is this a custom version of something like Rapid I/O or Hypertransport?

Or is this the famed 7460 chip?😕
 
Re: Re: DDR???

Originally posted by ftaok
I see that Intel/AMD has 400mhz and 533mhz and such. What does that actually mean?
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Actually, the current line of processors from AMD have "Advanced 266MHz Front-Side Bus" Intel has to get even faster bus speeds out because their chips can't handle as many instructions per clock cycle. Which is one of the reasons why the XP2100+ chip performs just as fast (or damned close to it) as the top speed pentium4. Similar things happen for the G4 processor as well, with more instructions being processed per clock cycle making a supposed slower chip perform better then the MHz/GHz rating would suggest.
 
Re: Bus/CPU speed issue.

Originally posted by mischief
this phrase in the coverage caught my eye: "System controller with custom ASIC done by Apple".

Is this a custom version of something like Rapid I/O or Hypertransport?

Or is this the famed 7460 chip?😕
Click to expand...
I don't think it's a 7460 becuase it wouldn't be done by Apple but instead Moto.

As for ASIC, I don't know what that means.
 
Originally posted by ftaok
Can someone explain to me about the various system busses? I see that Intel/AMD has 400mhz and 533mhz and such. What does that actually mean?
Click to expand...

Sorry in advance about the long post but I couldn't figure out how to make it shorter and still answer your question

The CPU communicates with the peripheral hardware through it's IO bus - often called the front side bus or just the bus. Normally, the only devices on the bus are the CPU itself and the peripheral controllers - or what many call the chipset. The controllers translate the front side bus speed and timing to things like PCI, AGP and memory.

The G4 front side bus runs at 133MHz and can transfer data in and out of the CPU once per clock cycle or 133 million times per second. Data to and from main memory flows thru the controller at the full speed of the bus.

Normal SDRAM also transfers data once per clock cycle so it perfectly matches the speed of the G4 bus. However, DDR RAM doubles the throughput because it can transfer data twice per clock cycle. So on a 133MHz bus, data transfers at 266MHz.

To take advantage of DDR, you would have to get the CPU to also transfer data at 266MHz. The easiest way to do that is have the CPU transfer data twice per clock cycle like the DDR RAM does. (That's what the 7455 cannot do).

As for the busses used by Intel and AMD at 400MHz and 533MHz, they are basically 200MHz and 266MHz busses that transfer data twice per clock cycle giving double the effective throughput. (I read this on another site a while back and did not check it out myself so I hope it is right).

Hope this helps.
 
Re: DDR???

Originally posted by gbojim


I've been one of the people saying this all along and I stick by it. Motorola's documentation clearly states that the bus interface is 133MHz and the current G4s can only transfer data once per clock cycle - therefore although you could plug in DDR RAM, the CPU can't read the data that fast.

So the question is - how is Apple taking advantage of DDR? I called a couple of people I know in Apple engineering and they refuse to talk about it. Anyone else have any info?
Click to expand...

It may be something as simple as a saturation issue. While if everything were operating at absolutely full capacity you may be right, in the real world the pipeline tends to shift from empty to full and perhaps there is some savings by filling the pipeline more quickly.

Also I wonder if it is 133 mhx "per pipeline" (of 4) or if the chip output itself is 133 mhz. I don't know.

Separate subject. I suppose you could plug one of those bluetooth dongles into your server main to do admin with a keyboard and mouse.

1000 ethernet is only about 4-5 times as fast as 100 in real world.

Rocketman


avatar.jpg
 
Originally posted by gbojim

To take advantage of DDR, you would have to get the CPU to also transfer data at 266MHz. The easiest way to do that is have the CPU transfer data twice per clock cycle like the DDR RAM does. (That's what the 7455 cannot do).

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

This may explain why the posterchild unit has two processors. And no more.

Rocketman

avatar.jpg
 
Re: DDR???

Originally posted by gbojim


I've been one of the people saying this all along and I stick by it. Motorola's documentation clearly states that the bus interface is 133MHz and the current G4s can only transfer data once per clock cycle - therefore although you could plug in DDR RAM, the CPU can't read the data that fast.

So the question is - how is Apple taking advantage of DDR? I called a couple of people I know in Apple engineering and they refuse to talk about it. Anyone else have any info?
Click to expand...

Simple... DMA.. (Direct Memory Access).. The 64bit PCI bus has direct access to the DDR RAM without using the g4..
 
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