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Does anybody run an Xserve at Home??

B

Burnie (BEL)

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 8, 2003
8
0
I was wondering if somebody was running such a machine for home use or 'small business' . What can you do when you have a couple mac's and some pcs in a network with the Xserve besides storing your data there. And another thing i noticed that the Xserve has only 2 ethernet connections?? I thought a server should have some more... Well I'm quiet new to networking but i know a bit of it i succeed to establish a airpot network at home :D And i was glad it worked ;)

Well or if there are other possibilities you can do with that machine at home?? plz post them!
Can you use it with airport?
Can you use it as a replacement for the Powermac?

Some questions i was wondering:confused:
thx
 
Q1: If it is attached to the base station directly, yes. that is what the second port is for. port 1 goes to an airport base station or effectively an 'uplink' like a modem even. port 2 goes to your network hub/switch/router.

Q2: Why??? A power mac can do everything the XServe does minus a few things:
{
no hotswap
no fancy lights
no serial connection
}

and plus a few aswell:
{
SCSI disks internally
upto (right now) 640GB total HDD space on ATA
two optical drives
faster processors + faster RAM (333 vs 266)
more 64bit PCI slots
better graphics slot (not half-size)
Airport internally
}

personallyi would take the powermac unless you needed it to be rackmounted.

just make sure that when you order it you get Mac OS X 10.2 Server preferably unlimited cause thats what the XServe has.


good luck.
 
Originally posted by Burnie (BEL)
Well the Xserve just looks show nice :cool:
Click to expand...

if you want an Xserve wait untill apple releases the XServe RAID. that will be a much better machine.

and i know it looks good. it is just unless you have a rack it is not going to fit anywhere.
 
Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the RAID is a companion piece of hardware, and not a different server. So there would really be no need to wait to buy if one wanted one today.
 
Yes, the Xserve is Apple's most beautiful piece of hardware (to some folks like me). I'd want one myself if it weren't so expensive. I'm hard of hearing already, and have a rack.

The Xserve is really deep, too, BTW, and if anyone were thinking of laying it on a desk, you're not supposed to put things on top of it.
 
I have an XServe at my home office which is where I run my small business.

From a business perspective, it is used as a file and print server and app test server. From a home perspective, it is basically a file and print server. You can use it with Airport. In my case, it is connected via Ethernet to a combo switch/router/802.11 access point.

It is mounted in a rack in the basement. Way too noisy for the office.
 
Wauw seems to me THe xserve does make a LOT of noise didn't knew that guess I'll wait until end of the month when the new ones are coming out
 
One of the silly things about the xserve is how easy it is to pop a drive out. They are not capable of be locked down. It is nice that they are easy to replace, but at work we needed to put stickers on the drives saying "do not press"

They are nice, but they are not desktop machines, any more than a dell poweredge 1650 is. They are great in a server room. The serial management port is real sweet. Apple needs to look at the dell products for real inspiration though. They have an embedded management controller that has it's own network port and embedded webserver that will let you turn the machine on and off, you can point the machine at a file on a tftp server, an .iso in particular, and it will boot off that file as if it where a drive inserted into the cd tray.

I know that apple has netboot, but the embedded management controller is very nice. If you have ever been able to use it or see it, you will agree.
 
the xserve is the loudest thing i have ever heard. we have one for our reseller. we got it over the powermac server because we wanted an xserve to show so we could sell them. plus if you get one youll have a nice time finding a rack for it. apple's xserve may be standard width and height, but it sure isnt standard length. the thing is so long its crazy. unless you gotta have swap hard drives and 40 of these with a rack mount, i would go with the powermac g4 server. really the only thing that makes the xserve great is the server software, which you can put on a powermac, or even an imac. you just gotta sit down and think what you need in a server. i hope apple can make it in this network world because the sure did fail terribly last time they entered this market. i think my parents still have an old apple server, broken of course.

iJon
 
Originally posted by peterjhill
One of the silly things about the xserve is how easy it is to pop a drive out. They are not capable of be locked down. It is nice that they are easy to replace, but at work we needed to put stickers on the drives saying "do not press"
Click to expand...

Did you break your lock? The machines have a Allen lock next to the power button which clamps things (including all four modules) down.
 
umm, sorry but:
TITLE
Xserve: Security Lock Does Not Lock Hard Drive Tray

Article ID: 75361
Created: 8/21/02
Modified: 9/2/02


TOPIC
Xserve's security lock does not prevent a hard drive tray latch from being pressed and opened. Xserve may stop responding if you eject a hard drive while the server is operating.


DISCUSSION
Symptom

Xserve may stop responding ("hang", or "freeze") if you press the latch for the hard drive that is the startup disk.

Xserve loses access to the hard drive if you press the latch for a hard drive that is not the startup disk.

Note: Xserve's security lock does not prevent a hard drive tray from being pressed and opened.
 
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