More Evidence of Upcoming Xserve Refresh?

[MacRumors]

AppleInsider follows up on yesterday's report regarding an update to Apple's Xserve offering with additional evidence for the new model. According to the report, a user has discovered text strings in the latest Mac OS X 10.5.7 beta identifying an unreleased "Xserve3,1" model, as well as references to Marvell's Yukon 2 Ethernet controller chips suitable only for Apple's Xserve line but not found in the current model.

In particular, AppleInsider reader Adam has discovered references to an "Xserve 3,1" inside the AppleTyMCEDriver extension file currently seeding to Mac OS X developers as part of Mac OS X 10.5.7.

The current incarnation of the Xserve, introduced in January of 2008, has long identified itself as "Xserve 2,", meaning "Xserve 3,1" stands as an machine ID indentifier [sic] for an unreleased family of Xserves -- almost certainly the upcoming Nehalem models.

Article Link: More Evidence of Upcoming Xserve Refresh?

 

[BTW]

xServer Home Edition maybe?

 

[talkingfuture]

Could the jump to 3 mean some visual changes and a major refresh. Not that is needs it, the X Serves look awesome.

 

[igazza]

page 2 news

 

[themoonisdown09]

Xserve will become a 10U rack-mount server and will contain 20 quad-core Xeon processors and 50 hard drive bays. Nice.

 

[Schizoid]

Dell

Assuming Apple would hike the price of this too, I went over to Dell.co.uk and checked out a similar server for my cash...

for your £1903 you get:
1 x 1.86Ghz E5502 Xeon CPU
1Gb RAM
1 x 73GB SAS HD
No rack mount kit
no optical drive
NO OPERATING SYSTEM!

Start speccing up a bit, and you start to pay silly money

 

[Preclaro_tipo]

new xserve out?

http://www.apple.com/xserve/

it says new now, so is this is the new one eh? (see link)

 

[Umbongo]

http://www.apple.com/xserve/

it says new now, so is this is the new one eh? (see link)

Nope it has just said new since it came out.

 

[nagromme]

Nope it has just said new since it came out.

It's like "new releases" at Blockbuster. Every movie with sound is a "new" release

 

[t0mat0]

http://www.apple.com/xserve/

it says new now, so is this is the new one eh? (see link)

No
http://www.apple.com/xserve/technology/architecture.html

Not out yet. Coming out with 10.5.7 perhaps?

 

[Bubba Satori]

Yawn. How about some new, affordable, expandable desktops. Nevermind.

 

[ChrisA]

So 10.5.7 will have to be released either before the new x-serve or at the same time. If the x-serve is due out soon then 10.5.7 is due out soon too.

How about some new, affordable, expandable desktops. Nevermind

I think Apple knows that such a product would completely cannibalize their entire iMac and Mac Pro line. Who'd buy one of those if there were a $1,500 quad core desktop? Apple would rather sell a few high margin units than five times as many low margin units.

We may as well wait for Aston Martin to make an affordable pickup truck.

 

[twoodcc]

So 10.5.7 will have to be released either before the new x-serve or at the same time. If the x-serve is due out soon then 10.5.7 is due out soon too.

that's right. i think both are coming very soon.

 

[alexbates]

I wonder how big the HD's will be in the new Xserves. They are already large as they are.

 

[d9pe]

maybe they add a new 2.5' diskssystem..

 

[Markov]

So 10.5.7 will have to be released either before the new x-serve or at the same time. If the x-serve is due out soon then 10.5.7 is due out soon too.



I think Apple knows that such a product would completely cannibalize their entire iMac and Mac Pro line. Who'd buy one of those if there were a $1,500 quad core desktop? Apple would rather sell a few high margin units than five times as many low margin units.

We may as well wait for Aston Martin to make an affordable pickup truck.

Hahahaha, cheap Aston Martin truck, that was a good one.

 

[primalman]

maybe they add a new 2.5' diskssystem..

Wow, 2.5' [2-1/2 foot] disk system! Woot! I need that.

 

[DELLsFan]

page 2 news

Well ... what's left? More Fool's coverage? They're dealing with enough of that in London, thank you very much.

 

[AidenShaw]

Wow, 2.5' [2-1/2 foot] disk system! Woot! I need that.

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_350.html

Wow - 5 megabytes...

 

[polaris20]

Last time I spec'd one out, they weren't too badly priced compared to an HP DL360, but lacked drive bays in comparison (the DL uses 2.5 SAS or SATA). However the X Serve can be had with a 1TB drive, so that makes up for it a little bit.
Also with so much going virtual, it's a tough pill to swallow having to buy an X Serve to run a VM of OS X Server. I'd love to run OS X server in a VM on XenServer or ESX, but obviously that'll never happen.

 

[deconstruct60]

Last time I spec'd one out, they weren't too badly priced compared to an HP DL360, but lacked drive bays in comparison (the DL uses 2.5 SAS or SATA). However the X Serve can be had with a 1TB drive, so that makes up for it a little bit.

Can get DL360's with 1TB drives now. The bigger problem with XServe is that it is just 1U. It is so thin it is hard to dissipate the heat of more than a few drives (along with the CPU , ram , etc.). The drives in the 1U server should be mainly for the OS. If need to access any meaningful amount of storage that should be out in the NAS/SAN or direct attached. 6 disks cranking out watts all being blown back one your CPUs isn't really a good situation. Going to run on the hot side almost all the time which generally doesn't lead to good outcomes over the long term.

Also with so much going virtual, it's a tough pill to swallow having to buy an X Serve to run a VM of OS X Server. I'd love to run OS X server in a VM on XenServer or ESX, but obviously that'll never happen.

You can run OS X server in a VM on any Apple box that has OS X server installed.
http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2008/06/virtual-leopard.html

So could run on a Mac Pro (it is a build-to-order option) Just kind of have to pay twice (or more) again for Mac OS X Server license for it (if don't get it pre-installed). XServe just comes that way by default.


The updated Server license doesn't seem to require that Mac OS X server has to be your dom0 though.

You may also install and use other copies of Mac OS X Server Software on the same Apple-labeled computer, provided that you acquire an individual and valid license from Apple for each of these other copies of Mac OS X Server Software.​

The license says you have to install it on a Apple labeled computer physical computer (since Apple doesn't make virtual labeled ones it can't be one of those. ). Not that is running on the lowest level. VMWare is not supporting Mac OS X Server as a guest OS for ESXi though. Just Fusion. (likewise Xen and others with lowest level hypervisors. Just not interested in certifying Apple hardware..... yet) On a 1U or even Mac Pro just how many OS Servers copies can you run though? I'd want a 2U (or larger) box for virtualization so could get a decently high multiple onto the box if trying to do production/test consolidations.

There may also be some hackery (emulating EFI? ) if the Apple install process has a "are you really an apple box" portion of the intsall that makes sense to add to Fusion but not so much for the other VMWare products right now. And for better or worse these low level hypervisors typically can't deal with EFI ( expecting BIOS to jumpstart from)



Apple just seems to want a minimum of $499 per guest.

 

[ViRGE]

The Yukon isn't a good indicator of there being a new server product due. It's a solid chip that has been used in a number of boards (I have a budget AMD Socket 754 board here with one), and I would expect the Yukon 2 would be used similarly. Apple may just be dropping the driver in for NICs that use the chip, or for some future product that is something besides an Xserve.