Or you can always keep the adapter on the cable of the monitor and connect it that way...
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Apple Updates Xserve to Nehalem Processors
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Or you can always keep the adapter on the cable of the monitor and connect it that way...
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.
Drool ...
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?
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?
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?
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.
Well in this case I'm not seeing a lot of point to the SSD, but if you had RAID'd SSDs in a RAID 5, they're quite nice for high load databases.
Absolutely. Directly comparing it to an HP DL360G6, it measures up nicely.
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.
And...done! (I think.)
eSATA bulkhead connector
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!
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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.
Didn't the previous Xserve use mini-DVI as its video-out port? That would have required an adapter as well.
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.
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, ...
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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.
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...
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...
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!!!)
EDIT: As for Linux as a CTO option, fuhggeddabouddit.
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.
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.
The more I think through it, the more I realize I'm just not asking the right questions ha. I guess what I really don't understand is what gets put on the server and what just says on the computer. At work I use 2 seperate laptops (thinkpads). I have no problem with saving files to the server and then grabbing the file from another computer. Where I get lost sometimes, is preferences and shortcuts. It doesn't seem like the kind of concept I'm going to fully grasp by posting back and forth on a thread. Thanks though, because the MacPro option could be handy.
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.
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.
EDIT: As for Linux as a CTO option, fuhggeddabouddit.
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.
Believe me, after years of talks with apple about this, I know it is a pipe dream.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).
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
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
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 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