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Xserve & Xserve RAID Updated
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So if they are dumping the Seagate 400GB SATA drives for the new Hitachi 500GB SATAs, when will we be able to buy a new PM with dual 500s?
w_parietti22 said:$34,000 doesnt suprise me seeing that 16gbs of ram costs $11,600
Anyone who buys their memory from Apple has lost their mind.
1st Apple only gives a 90 warranty on it(Unless you buy the maintenance)
2nd Apple uses memory from 3 different manufacturers (Nanya, Micron-Corsair, Samsung) Each of these manufacturers offer lifetime warranty on their memory. So Apple is just ripping you off.
3rd They charge 2 times what you can buy the same memory elsewhere.
You can find 16GB Corsair pc3200 ecc for $ 5296 on pricewatch
the end of the Mac cluster experiment
If you want a PPC cluster, go Blue Gene. If you want x64 - go AMD/Linux or Xeon/Linux.
And, BTW, have y'all seen the new SAS/SATA arrays? You can hot-plug both SCSI and SATA drives into the same enclosure.
Yes, but since Apple will soon be selling the same Xeon (or updated Pentium-M-based Xeon) systems as Dell and SuperMicro and LinuxNetworks I doubt that we'll see many more clusters built from the lame-duck PPC models....~loserman~ said:
If you want a PPC cluster, go Blue Gene. If you want x64 - go AMD/Linux or Xeon/Linux.
And, BTW, have y'all seen the new SAS/SATA arrays? You can hot-plug both SCSI and SATA drives into the same enclosure.
Mechcozmo said:IRC, the G5 and the Xserve share the same memory controller. So, if you really want to, you can. But isn't 8GB of RAM enough for anybody?
Not really, the Xserve uses ECC RAM, the G5 tower doesn't. I believe the G5 tower can do 16GB if you can find 2GB non-ECC sticks, which I couldn't the last time I looked.
BTW, I just placed an order for a CTO Xserve RAID a few days ago, and was a little surprised when I checked order status this morning and it was "Replaced with new product". I should hire out my Apple product timing abilities!
combatcolin said:
I use the XServe RAID every day. We use these as a cost effective alternative to a SAN array for disk based backups and they work quite well...They're also very sexy look'n in a rack, if I could just get them all in ONE rack...
But seriously, bumping them up to 500 gig drives is going to be a nice thing 'cause I know we've been filling ours up pretty quick lately, so I look forward to the increased sizes! Now if they'd get those darn perpendicular drives out...
(We're a decent sized webhosting company and use these and an EMC SAN for backups of our servers and dedicated/colocated boxes, much faster than tape and a lot easier to manage!)
good reason for that...
Remember when VAtech tore down "System X" even before putting it into production? Reason: non-ECC memory wasn't stable enough for them to start production work.
It wasn't until they could use ECC memory that the "system" would stay up long enough to be usable.
Don't buy lots of GiB of non-ECC memory unless you like to have regular visits from Colonel Panic, General Fault, and Sargeant UnexpectedQuit.
You really wouldn't want to buy 2 GiB non-ECC DIMMs even if you could find them. Undetected memory errors aren't pretty.Alexander said:
Remember when VAtech tore down "System X" even before putting it into production? Reason: non-ECC memory wasn't stable enough for them to start production work.
It wasn't until they could use ECC memory that the "system" would stay up long enough to be usable.
Don't buy lots of GiB of non-ECC memory unless you like to have regular visits from Colonel Panic, General Fault, and Sargeant UnexpectedQuit.
AidenShaw said:
Hmm, interesting. I have a G5 tower with 5GB, and it runs under pretty heavy load 24/7. Maybe all the unexpected crashes (maybe once every couple months on average) are due to flipped bits, who knows. Does this mean that future G5 towers will use ECC, because people might load them up with RAM? (Not to mention use them as servers, since the Xserves have a few serious flaws compared to the towers for server use.)
one error per gigabyte per month
I have hundreds of HPaq DL3x0 servers with ECC, and anytime I walk through the lab I see a few of them with an orange LED glowing that means that a burst of memory errors have been corrected through ECC (occasional random errors don't light the LED).
I occasionally see a system sitting at a blue screen that says "Uncorrectable memory error at address XXXX in DIMM #3". Those guys get a new DIMM.
If you want to know what the state of the art in memory tech is, do a Yahoo! search for "chipkill", and wonder why Apple is selling 8 GiB systems without even ECC.... Or look at the HP ProLiant systems with RAID RAM and hot-swap replacement of failed DIMMs.
Compaq did a study quite a while ago, and it came up with the statistic that cosmic rays and other randomness will cause one error per gigabyte per month. It may no longer be gospel, due to newer memory tech, but the point is pretty simple - memory errors do occur, and the more memory you have the more errors you'll have.Alexander said:
I have hundreds of HPaq DL3x0 servers with ECC, and anytime I walk through the lab I see a few of them with an orange LED glowing that means that a burst of memory errors have been corrected through ECC (occasional random errors don't light the LED).
I occasionally see a system sitting at a blue screen that says "Uncorrectable memory error at address XXXX in DIMM #3". Those guys get a new DIMM.
If you want to know what the state of the art in memory tech is, do a Yahoo! search for "chipkill", and wonder why Apple is selling 8 GiB systems without even ECC.... Or look at the HP ProLiant systems with RAID RAM and hot-swap replacement of failed DIMMs.
~loserman~ said:
Now that's what I call a wind tunnel.
That's over 12,000 fans in that one picture!
Of course I have a maxed out Xserve setup. And I need the RAID array for my free iTunes collection. My wife has her own Xserve. What's annoying is that the kids are hounding me to get them one each too. I guess I'll have to give in or I wouldn't be a good father.Mechcozmo said:
Just ordered.
I just put in my ordder for my IT Department for the low end xserve with 500GB storage. If all goes well I will be ordering the new xserve raid along with a 2nd xserve in a few weeks.
I just put in my ordder for my IT Department for the low end xserve with 500GB storage. If all goes well I will be ordering the new xserve raid along with a 2nd xserve in a few weeks.
Or wait for the quad CPU Xeon Xserve
How about an Xserve with 4 64-bit CPUs, 2.8 to 3.2 GHz, 2 MiB L2 cache per CPU core, 800 MHz bus, and HyperThreading for 8 logical CPUs. (The multi-threaded applications usually run on servers will often benefit significantly from HT.)
Apple could release quad CPU (dual dual-core) Xeon-based Xserves before too long (by the end of the year).michael666 said:I will just wait for an Xserve nano.
How about an Xserve with 4 64-bit CPUs, 2.8 to 3.2 GHz, 2 MiB L2 cache per CPU core, 800 MHz bus, and HyperThreading for 8 logical CPUs. (The multi-threaded applications usually run on servers will often benefit significantly from HT.)
The server is fine, but the mounts SUCK
Just an FYI, we don't have any issues with our Xserver, but I do have to say it has the cheapest and worst mounting brackets of any our boxes. They actually "sag" before your put the server in them to "stiffen" them. I mean it hasn't fallen out of the rack, but still, we should expect better from apple.
--Randy
Just an FYI, we don't have any issues with our Xserver, but I do have to say it has the cheapest and worst mounting brackets of any our boxes. They actually "sag" before your put the server in them to "stiffen" them. I mean it hasn't fallen out of the rack, but still, we should expect better from apple.
--Randy
AidenShaw said:
Or that means your Hpaq has had one of their famous "fuse has blown" insight manager "Lights Out" events. Those cause the same LED to blink and seem to be common on the DL380 and 360s.
Ok, se maybe a select few have actually seen them in the flesh.
Still, with all things being considered, not exactly as in tresting as new PM's or PB's eh?
16GB RAM, however, Now where cooking with Gas!
Smoke them if you've got them!!
Still, with all things being considered, not exactly as in tresting as new PM's or PB's eh?
16GB RAM, however, Now where cooking with Gas!
Smoke them if you've got them!!
AidenShaw said:
I doubt anyone will ever build an Apple Cluster after Apple goes to Xeons.
Why deal with OS X when you don't have too.
Also as to wanting PPC I would rather build a cluster out of the new JS40 Blade servers than Blue Gene.
Blue Gene is a special purpose system(Not a cluster). It is very expensive and NOT for everyone. It is a real chore to get many codes to run on it.
As to X86.
We have done extensive testing on our Opteron and Xeon and PPC clusters and the PPC simply blows both out of the water in floating point and price performance.
2.3 Ghz PPC 9.2 Gflops max.
2.8 Ghz Opteron 5.6 Gflops max
3.6 Ghz Xeon 7.2 Gflops max.
New 2.5 Ghz dual-core PPC 20 Gflops max
Dual-core 2.2 Ghz Opteron 8.8 Gflops max
Where is the dual-core Xeon?
Yes, but if you have embarrassingly parallel codes that will run on it, it's a pretty good answer.~loserman~ said:
I might ask, "where is the dual-core PPC970" ?? I don't see them on the Xserve or BladeCenter pages....~loserman~ said:Also We have done extensive testing on our Opteron and Xeon and PPC clusters and the PPC simply blows both out of the water in floating point and price performance.
2.3 Ghz PPC 9.2 Gflops max.
2.8 Ghz Opteron 5.6 Gflops max
3.6 Ghz Xeon 7.2 Gflops max.
New 2.5 Ghz dual-core PPC 20 Gflops max
Dual-core 2.2 Ghz Opteron 8.8 Gflops max
Where is the dual-core Xeon?
If you invented the numbers for that one (hmmm... (9.2*2)*(2.5/2.3) = 20) then I'll say that the dual-core Xeon is 16.2 ((7.2*2)*(3.6/3.2)).
What is the application, O/S, etc? Any real-world relevance? (Even IBM openly says that the MADD instruction on PPC gives it some great benchmark numbers that don't translate into real application speedups....)
