True, but that's the way Apple does things...great for the consumer world, not so good for the enterprise.
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Steve Jobs: Xserve Axed Over Poor Sales
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True, but that's the way Apple does things...great for the consumer world, not so good for the enterprise.
uh-huh. I bet guys at Mac mini colo have never worked in a datacenter either?
What you are doing here is a classing example of strawman-argument.
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Well, technically yes, but ....
As a long time sysadmin myself, I've got to question the proclaimed *need* for redundant power supplies and hot-swap drives all the time.
Yes, there are SOME scenarios where either or both of these items are critical to an operation ... but I think the overall "requirement" is just a myth, perpetuated by I.T. people regurgitating what they read or were told by someone else.
For starters? Any decent server room is climate controlled. Since all the systems are kept at a nearly ideal constant temperature, the components tend to last longer than they do in, say, your home computer that's shoved under a desk with poor airflow. If you buy quality machines to start with, power supply failures in the server room are exceedingly rare. (To be honest, I don't think I've EVER had to pull a machine out of a server rack to swap a bad power supply! Obviously, it can happen, but a motherboard can die too. You don't see a "requirement" that all servers contain dual redundant motherboards though, do you?)
Hot swap drive capabilities are a little more useful ... but last I heard, a Mac Pro does in fact have hot-swap capable drive trays. They're simply not accessible from the front of the machine and convenient like you usually see with rack mount servers. In any case, if you're already running a RAID 5 array, a dead drive shouldn't cause any downtime anyway. You simply get a notification that one drive failed and needs replacement, and it rebuilds upon replacement with a good one. In a LOT of environments, it's not really that difficult to power the server down for a few minutes to do that drive replacement, as long as you're able to put it off until "after hours".
As a long time sysadmin myself, I've got to question the proclaimed *need* for redundant power supplies and hot-swap drives all the time.
Yes, there are SOME scenarios where either or both of these items are critical to an operation ... but I think the overall "requirement" is just a myth, perpetuated by I.T. people regurgitating what they read or were told by someone else.
For starters? Any decent server room is climate controlled. Since all the systems are kept at a nearly ideal constant temperature, the components tend to last longer than they do in, say, your home computer that's shoved under a desk with poor airflow. If you buy quality machines to start with, power supply failures in the server room are exceedingly rare. (To be honest, I don't think I've EVER had to pull a machine out of a server rack to swap a bad power supply! Obviously, it can happen, but a motherboard can die too. You don't see a "requirement" that all servers contain dual redundant motherboards though, do you?)
Hot swap drive capabilities are a little more useful ... but last I heard, a Mac Pro does in fact have hot-swap capable drive trays. They're simply not accessible from the front of the machine and convenient like you usually see with rack mount servers. In any case, if you're already running a RAID 5 array, a dead drive shouldn't cause any downtime anyway. You simply get a notification that one drive failed and needs replacement, and it rebuilds upon replacement with a good one. In a LOT of environments, it's not really that difficult to power the server down for a few minutes to do that drive replacement, as long as you're able to put it off until "after hours".
Only because you've never done any systems administration. Stick to what you know.
The more I think about this announcement the less I'm concerned with it. If they make the next MacPro have hot-swappable drives, LOM, and dual power-supplies I'm fine with it. I suspect Apple was having issues getting the Xserve to take the faster hex-core CPUs anyway.
Even if the xserve as a line item on some accountant's spreadsheet that isn't selling well, it's main purpose is primarily to support large workgroups of other Macs (although there are other uses as well).
So by discontinuing the Xserve, you risk losing large purchases of other Macs that companies used the Xserve to support.
So Job's usual flippant answer 'they weren't selling well' is either a poorly thought out reason, or there's more this this decision that he isn't telling.
I'm hoping it's the later and the Unisys deal will have some real solution down the road.
If not, it's another nail in the Macs coffin as a tool by Pros.
Mac Mini colo is not enterprise. They're simply a hosting solution. They don't have the same requirements as enterprise customers do. While it's nice for running a website off cold backups with rsyncs in crontabs, I wouldn't run my ERP or CRM off such a solution.
Nor would I trust it for things like my client management or even my video editing solution.
No there wasn't. Some people will buy anything if it looks shiny or is made by Apple or if someone convinces them hard enough. [Pet Rocks]
Seriously the only people running XServes (if they do exist) must be running it for the Integration (All-Mac shop, easy to deploy and manage) and GUI based Server configuration tools (hatred for command line) that come with OS X Server.
But Steve is right in reminding them of their douchebaggery - best response ever - hardly anyone was buying them! [ Goes without saying that Xserve buyers are not of very sound judgement and they should consider stepping aside and being little more realistic ]
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Yes, because managing three servers as opposed to one is such a burden...
Seriously: why are you being so damn hostile about this thing? Did I accidentally piss on your morning cereal or something?
"Hardly anyone was buying them" is to be expected when you treat the enterprise market like the Mac market.
"Here is a superexpensive shiny pizza box" is not how you approach the enterprise market.
"Here is a superexpensive shiny pizza box" is not how you approach the enterprise market.
You use iSCSI! Wait, only one gigabit port... well.. er... you use USB Ethernet dongles for front side access and the gigabit for the storage. That's the ticket.
Ok I read enough. I have replaced enough drives in my lifetime to know that you have never done systems administration on something bigger than your home network to spout things like these.
Bringing down a machine to replace a failed mirror drive in vg00 is not an acceptable compromise. These things need uptime.
Heck, we moved to boot on SAN precisely because boot drive failures were causing us too many incidents. Are you suggesting our use of dual HBAs, completely redundant fabrics and dual parity in our storage arrays is also a myth as far as requirements go ?
What makes you think that you need Xserves to support a network of Macs? You do not. You could use just about any server for that purpose. I bet that Apple has way more data on this subject-matter than anyone on this discussion has. And I bet that data shows that
a) Mac mini and Mac pro are outselling Xserve in server-use
b) Most customers use Linux or Windows-servers with their Mac-network.
Have you seen the pictures of their data center? I would get fired if my Data Center looked like that (and I assure you I have a LOT more computing power in a lot less space). Of course I run no xserve's today, rather racks full of Dell's running FreeBSD.
Honestly, no CEO should be personally replying back on emails sent to them. Just the fact that he responded at all and gave ANY info is good enough.
By the same argument way do any of us buy MP's, MBP, MM, MA, iPhone etc ? There are almost always cheaper more powerful options with better connectivity.
(And no I am not trolling I am a former SysAdmin who worked on Windows Boxes and now works in media and was converted to Apple for a number of reasons but Price and Power is not one of them)
If someone has a different opinion than you do, it must obviously mean that he's a moron who does not know a server from a hole in the ground!
Just because someone disagrees with you does NOT mean that the other person is incompetent or just plain stupid. So give it a rest already.
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Not a Big Deal
They were hardly selling. Not that big of a deal.
Apple caters to Smaller Businesses. Who cares about the Large enterprise market. If they're upset they need to change to Apples way of doing business.
OS X Server isn't dead & Mac Pro X Serve is the best thing Apple could have done.
Please remember Apple is a MOBILE DEVICES company.
-Bruce
They were hardly selling. Not that big of a deal.
Apple caters to Smaller Businesses. Who cares about the Large enterprise market. If they're upset they need to change to Apples way of doing business.
OS X Server isn't dead & Mac Pro X Serve is the best thing Apple could have done.
Please remember Apple is a MOBILE DEVICES company.
-Bruce
OS image multiplication means increased incident and maintenance cost. Also, using cold backups as you suggest means increased downtime for these incidents and maintenance.
Now add to that the wholly inadequate hardware inside the Mac Mini for said maintenance or repairs means you add yet another layer and delays to these incidents and maintenances.
Again, you have never done this before. Stick to what you know.
Yes, yes you did.
Apple seems to focus on the end-user. They believe, (as do I,) that IT equipment and people's role is enable the user, not dictate policy.
I think many people are not going to agree on this, but you building things the old way. Hardware is cheap. MySQL is fully cluster-able. If your CRM is so important you should have multiple load-balanced servers hosting it with multiple clustered database servers. For a small site an array of minis would be fine, cheaper, use less power, and space. If you have a huge site then it really isn't a big deal to switch to MacPro since your getting bigger hardware for cheaper price anyway.