well, someone had to start the topic thread (and, mods, you'll notice i did you a favor by putting it in the current hardware forum... you can thank me later. )
At first I was a bit surprised by the Xserve configuration. It seemed to be a bit of a lightweight (ok, I half expected a 1.4GHz G4). Then I saw the price! This machine is amazingly cheap for what it offers.
With 2 1 GHz G4's, Apple clearly doesn't mean for these to be in render farms. But at 3k each, these are pretty affordable machines.
If the future pro machines have a similar motherboard as the servers, then the new pro machines will sport 266MHz DDR. Not too bad.
New Server Delivers Multiprocessing, Large Storage & Fast Networking
CUPERTINO, Calif., May 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Apple® (Nasdaq: AAPL - News) today introduced Xserve(TM), a powerful 1U rack-mount server designed with Apple's legendary ease-of-use for groundbreakingly simple set up and remote management. Designed from the ground up as the perfect complement to Apple's UNIX-based Mac® OS X Server software, Xserve is ideal for business and education customers.
Xserve provides exceptional performance in a compact 1U rack-mount server. Its dual 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processors each have 2MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) L3 cache, and Xserve is the first 1U server to use DDR SDRAM memory with up to 2GB capacity. Xserve offers best-in-class storage, with up to 480GB on four hot-plug ATA/100 drives, and best-in-class networking with standard dual Gigabit Ethernet ports. Xserve includes an unlimited user license to Mac OS X Server software, offering users a perfect combination for file/print service, video streaming, database applications, computational clustering and web and mail serving.
"Xserve is the result of listening to our customers," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Xserve is super easy to set up, and is easily integrated into existing networks. Plus, with its unlimited-user software license at no extra cost, Xserve is a tremendously cost effective server with real UNIX under the hood."
"We saw Xserve and were blown away. We are adding 40 new servers before the end of the year, and Xserve is perfect for our outdoor creative and media production needs," said Joe Shannon, Clear Channel Worldwide's CTO. "As the global leader in outdoor advertising, radio broadcasting and live entertainment, Clear Channel will be using Xserve to satisfy our demanding network requirements."
"Apple's powerful new Xserve rack-mount workgroup server solution combined with Apple's UNIX-based Mac OS X Server software is a superior platform for Oracle9i Database," said Michael Rocha, senior vice president, Product Services and Platform Technologies, Oracle Corp. "Oracle's leading database clustering technology, Oracle9i Real Application Clusters, running on Xserve will deliver enterprise-class solutions to our joint customers and create new opportunities for both companies."
Xserve is perfect for I/O intensive applications such as digital video, high-resolution digital imagery and large scientific datasets. With capacity and performance rivaling much more expensive servers from Dell, HP, IBM and Sun, Xserve delivers high-speed networking, 15 gigaflops of computational power and nearly a half terabyte of hot-plug storage. With four independent ATA/100 drive channels, Xserve offers nearly double the performance of other 1U servers that utilize more expensive Ultra3 SCSI drives.
Xserve features several new capabilities designed to make server set up and remote management easier than ever before. Server Admin(TM), a powerful new services monitoring and remote management tool, allows administrators to easily set up and manage all key Mac OS X Server network services remotely. Server Monitor(TM), a powerful new hardware monitoring tool, allows system administrators to remotely monitor one or many servers, get detailed subsystem views instantly, produce reports and receive system notification alerts via text capable email, pager, cell phones or PDAs.
Apple is offering a choice of world-class services and support programs including 4-hour onsite response, 24x7 technical support, AppleCare Service Parts Kits and the AppleCare Professional SupportLine and Tools program.
Additional Xserve features include:
*\tsingle or dual 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processors;
*\t2MB DDR L3 cache per processor;
*\tthree PCI slots, two of which are 64-bit, 66 MHz PCI slots for high
performance I/O-the fastest ever in a Mac®;
*\tup to 2GB of DDR high-performance memory running at 266 MHz-the first DDR main memory in a Mac;
*\tsoftware RAID mirroring for protection of important data and RAID striping for additional performance;
*\ta VGA graphics card that supports headless booting and enables easy connectivity to industry standard cross-platform devices;
*\tan optional AGP 4X graphics card to connect displays, keyboards and a mouse for "Mac-in-a-rack" solutions;
*\tthree 400Mbps FireWire® ports with two accessible on the back panel and one on the front panel for quick access;
*\ttwo USB ports, one DB-9 serial console port and an optional Ultra3 SCSI card for connecting to external storage and backup devices;
*\tan optional fiber Gigabit Ethernet adapter;
*\tMac OS X Server software featuring QuickTime® Streaming Server, WebObjects and the latest advancements from the Open Source community such as Apache, Samba, PHP, MySQL and Tomcat; and
*\tNative protocol support for AFP over TCP/IP, SMB/CIFS, FTP and NFS enables easy integration into existing Mac, UNIX or Windows networks.
Pricing & Availability
Xserve will be available in June 2002, and customers can place orders beginning today through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com) and through Apple Authorized Resellers. Xserve will come in two standard configurations, or can be fully customized to meet specific customer requirements. The two standard configurations are:
-- single 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 256MB DDR RAM, 60GB ATA/100 Apple
Drive Module, dual Gigabit Ethernet, CD-ROM and Mac OS X Server with
unlimited clients for a suggested list price of $2,999 (US); and
Drive Module, dual Gigabit Ethernet, CD-ROM and Mac OS X Server with
unlimited clients for a suggested list price of $3,999 (US).
Apple today also previewed its new high-performance RAID storage product featuring industry standard 2Gb Fiber Channel, which will be introduced later this year.
Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings.
Major Third Party Developers Commit Support to Apple's New Xserve:
Sybase
"We are committed to becoming the standard enterprise database running on Mac OS X," said Dr. Raj Nathan, senior vice president and general manager, Sybase Enterprise Solutions Division. "We are not only impressed with Mac OS X and its user friendly capabilities, but equally impressed with Apple's new generation of servers. This confirms our confidence and enthusiasm for Apple's increasingly robust technology offering."
HP
"We are delighted to continue our tradition of working with Apple by extending HP OpenView management software to the Mac," said Peter van der Fluit, vice president of Sales and Marketing, HP Software. "As the leader in services-driven management solutions, HP fully supports a multi-platform strategy, which complements Apple's embrace of industry standards and enables Apple's Xserve to be seamlessly managed within the HP OpenView environment. Working with Apple we will bring more of our services-driven management solutions to the Mac to provide our mutual customers with reliable solutions that scale to their needs."
Adobe
"The Adobe Web Workgroup Server runs on Apple's new Xserve and offers sophisticated collaboration and site management features that vastly improve web and design team productivity," said Susan Prescott, vice president of Adobe's Cross-Media Group. "The combination of our powerful suite of web publishing and design tools with Apple's new rack-mount server offers our customers the most complete solution for web development. We are pleased to build on our long standing relationship with Apple and deliver yet another powerful solution to the creative community."
4D
"Apple's new Xserve is incredibly powerful, reliable and simple to manage," said Laurent Ribardiere, CEO and founder of 4D. "Users will find that the combination of 4D, 4D WebSTAR V and Xserve provides a comprehensive, cutting-edge solution that fulfills all of their database and web serving needs."
Dantz
"Dantz Retrospect provides world-class backup software for the Mac and all of our products run on Apple's new Xserve," stated Larry Zulch, president and CEO of Dantz Development Corporation. "We are excited that Apple has brought its industry leading ease of use to a powerful new rack-mount server."
FileMaker
"FileMaker Pro 5.5 Unlimited is optimized to run on Mac OS X Server and take advantage of the integrated Apache Web Server," said Dominique Goupil, FileMaker's president. "Combined with the new Apple Xserve, Apple now delivers an even more powerful platform for deploying FileMaker solutions for business and education."
Platform
"By supporting Mac OS X, we can leverage our 10 years of experience in providing clustering solutions to UNIX customers to help Mac users improve productivity, performance and ROI," said Robert Gordon, Platform's CEO. "The powerful combination of Apple's new Xserve and Platform LSF workload management software enables digital content creation, higher education, government and life sciences organizations to fully utilize all of their enterprise compute resources."
Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, FireWire, QuickTime , Xserve, Server Admin and Server Monitor are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
I would expect these servers to sell rather well. Hopefully Apple can get the $$ from server sales to drive further R&D that bleeds into their desktop & consumer lines.
The goal is not to make the latest and greatest uber server with eight G4's. The goal is to establish a beachhead in the server market and to shore up Apple accounts. Had Apple come out with a server that costs greater than $5,000, quite a few people would probably balk at the cost and complain that Apple was missing its market. FOr an entry level server, this is pretty good- better than Apple has done before.
As I said before, this machine does not seem to be render farm material. Perhaps Apple will eventually release a higher end server that supports quad processors or something like that. This is just speculation.
I believe I read somewhere on these forums that a 1U rack has never had a dual processor configuration. Is that accurate? Actually, 4 HD controllers & 4 drives sounds pretty amazing in a small unit.
I don't know diddly 'bout dem dar RAIDs, x-epting they be good fer killing bugs.
However,
[quote]
Apple today also previewed its new high-performance RAID storage product featuring industry standard 2Gb Fiber Channel, which will be introduced later this year.
Steve introduces Alex Grossman, Director Server and Storage Marketing:
*\t3U height
*\t14 drive bays
*\t14 120GB ATA drives - in same hot-plug format as Xserve
*\t1.68TB
*\tDual 2GB Fibre Channel on system
*\t400MB/second storage throughput
RAID is all about data protection -- all critical components are redundant. Dual RAID controllers -- drives, power, cooling -- all redundant. 14 independent hard drives, and each RAID controller connects to seven of them. Each has an independent ATA controller that goes to the heart of the system. 128MB processor cache in the RAID processor. Redundant drive cache, redundant fans. Will be Available by the end of calendar year 2002.
I believe I read somewhere on these forums that a 1U rack has never had a dual processor configuration. Is that accurate? Actually, 4 HD controllers & 4 drives sounds pretty amazing in a small unit.<hr></blockquote>
Actually, I was wondering how they got all those things stuff in a 1U rack myself. I thought it also said three PCI slots, and an AGP4x option. I think there was a hot-swapable kitchen sink as well.
RAID is not all about data protection, it's about performance as well. with most RAID solutions you can get at 2x read speeds.
And there's the stigma of the combination of software and ATA RAID.
1) software RAID is slow (entirely true)
2) ATA disks are more cheaply made than SCSI disks (mostly true)
I don't think most people will bite. We bought a Sun A1000 12 disk SCSI RAID array for $6000 with an educational discount, 12x18 GB disks. That's roughly half of what it costs normally. If Apple can get this to educators for <$6000, then they may have something, but I doubt it...
These servers look pretty sweet. Those specs in a PowerMac would be nice. Obviously now its clear the G4 supports DDR, so either it is a newer G4 version, new mobo, or Apple is just shady as hell. Ultra ATA100, and is that FireWire 2 I see? I say if we get these features i a G5 it will be great.
)
Comments
At first I was a bit surprised by the Xserve configuration. It seemed to be a bit of a lightweight (ok, I half expected a 1.4GHz G4). Then I saw the price! This machine is amazingly cheap for what it offers.
With 2 1 GHz G4's, Apple clearly doesn't mean for these to be in render farms. But at 3k each, these are pretty affordable machines.
If the future pro machines have a similar motherboard as the servers, then the new pro machines will sport 266MHz DDR. Not too bad.
Press Release
SOURCE: Apple Computer Inc.
Apple Introduces Xserve 1U Rack-Mount Server
New Server Delivers Multiprocessing, Large Storage & Fast Networking
CUPERTINO, Calif., May 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Apple® (Nasdaq: AAPL - News) today introduced Xserve(TM), a powerful 1U rack-mount server designed with Apple's legendary ease-of-use for groundbreakingly simple set up and remote management. Designed from the ground up as the perfect complement to Apple's UNIX-based Mac® OS X Server software, Xserve is ideal for business and education customers.
Xserve provides exceptional performance in a compact 1U rack-mount server. Its dual 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processors each have 2MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) L3 cache, and Xserve is the first 1U server to use DDR SDRAM memory with up to 2GB capacity. Xserve offers best-in-class storage, with up to 480GB on four hot-plug ATA/100 drives, and best-in-class networking with standard dual Gigabit Ethernet ports. Xserve includes an unlimited user license to Mac OS X Server software, offering users a perfect combination for file/print service, video streaming, database applications, computational clustering and web and mail serving.
"Xserve is the result of listening to our customers," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Xserve is super easy to set up, and is easily integrated into existing networks. Plus, with its unlimited-user software license at no extra cost, Xserve is a tremendously cost effective server with real UNIX under the hood."
"We saw Xserve and were blown away. We are adding 40 new servers before the end of the year, and Xserve is perfect for our outdoor creative and media production needs," said Joe Shannon, Clear Channel Worldwide's CTO. "As the global leader in outdoor advertising, radio broadcasting and live entertainment, Clear Channel will be using Xserve to satisfy our demanding network requirements."
"Apple's powerful new Xserve rack-mount workgroup server solution combined with Apple's UNIX-based Mac OS X Server software is a superior platform for Oracle9i Database," said Michael Rocha, senior vice president, Product Services and Platform Technologies, Oracle Corp. "Oracle's leading database clustering technology, Oracle9i Real Application Clusters, running on Xserve will deliver enterprise-class solutions to our joint customers and create new opportunities for both companies."
Xserve is perfect for I/O intensive applications such as digital video, high-resolution digital imagery and large scientific datasets. With capacity and performance rivaling much more expensive servers from Dell, HP, IBM and Sun, Xserve delivers high-speed networking, 15 gigaflops of computational power and nearly a half terabyte of hot-plug storage. With four independent ATA/100 drive channels, Xserve offers nearly double the performance of other 1U servers that utilize more expensive Ultra3 SCSI drives.
Xserve features several new capabilities designed to make server set up and remote management easier than ever before. Server Admin(TM), a powerful new services monitoring and remote management tool, allows administrators to easily set up and manage all key Mac OS X Server network services remotely. Server Monitor(TM), a powerful new hardware monitoring tool, allows system administrators to remotely monitor one or many servers, get detailed subsystem views instantly, produce reports and receive system notification alerts via text capable email, pager, cell phones or PDAs.
Apple is offering a choice of world-class services and support programs including 4-hour onsite response, 24x7 technical support, AppleCare Service Parts Kits and the AppleCare Professional SupportLine and Tools program.
Additional Xserve features include:
*\tsingle or dual 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processors;
*\t2MB DDR L3 cache per processor;
*\tthree PCI slots, two of which are 64-bit, 66 MHz PCI slots for high
performance I/O-the fastest ever in a Mac®;
*\tup to 2GB of DDR high-performance memory running at 266 MHz-the first DDR main memory in a Mac;
*\tsoftware RAID mirroring for protection of important data and RAID striping for additional performance;
*\ta VGA graphics card that supports headless booting and enables easy connectivity to industry standard cross-platform devices;
*\tan optional AGP 4X graphics card to connect displays, keyboards and a mouse for "Mac-in-a-rack" solutions;
*\tthree 400Mbps FireWire® ports with two accessible on the back panel and one on the front panel for quick access;
*\ttwo USB ports, one DB-9 serial console port and an optional Ultra3 SCSI card for connecting to external storage and backup devices;
*\tan optional fiber Gigabit Ethernet adapter;
*\tMac OS X Server software featuring QuickTime® Streaming Server, WebObjects and the latest advancements from the Open Source community such as Apache, Samba, PHP, MySQL and Tomcat; and
*\tNative protocol support for AFP over TCP/IP, SMB/CIFS, FTP and NFS enables easy integration into existing Mac, UNIX or Windows networks.
Pricing & Availability
Xserve will be available in June 2002, and customers can place orders beginning today through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com) and through Apple Authorized Resellers. Xserve will come in two standard configurations, or can be fully customized to meet specific customer requirements. The two standard configurations are:
-- single 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 256MB DDR RAM, 60GB ATA/100 Apple
Drive Module, dual Gigabit Ethernet, CD-ROM and Mac OS X Server with
unlimited clients for a suggested list price of $2,999 (US); and
-- dual 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processors, 512MB DDR RAM, 60GB ATA/100 Apple
Drive Module, dual Gigabit Ethernet, CD-ROM and Mac OS X Server with
unlimited clients for a suggested list price of $3,999 (US).
Apple today also previewed its new high-performance RAID storage product featuring industry standard 2Gb Fiber Channel, which will be introduced later this year.
Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings.
Major Third Party Developers Commit Support to Apple's New Xserve:
Sybase
"We are committed to becoming the standard enterprise database running on Mac OS X," said Dr. Raj Nathan, senior vice president and general manager, Sybase Enterprise Solutions Division. "We are not only impressed with Mac OS X and its user friendly capabilities, but equally impressed with Apple's new generation of servers. This confirms our confidence and enthusiasm for Apple's increasingly robust technology offering."
HP
"We are delighted to continue our tradition of working with Apple by extending HP OpenView management software to the Mac," said Peter van der Fluit, vice president of Sales and Marketing, HP Software. "As the leader in services-driven management solutions, HP fully supports a multi-platform strategy, which complements Apple's embrace of industry standards and enables Apple's Xserve to be seamlessly managed within the HP OpenView environment. Working with Apple we will bring more of our services-driven management solutions to the Mac to provide our mutual customers with reliable solutions that scale to their needs."
Adobe
"The Adobe Web Workgroup Server runs on Apple's new Xserve and offers sophisticated collaboration and site management features that vastly improve web and design team productivity," said Susan Prescott, vice president of Adobe's Cross-Media Group. "The combination of our powerful suite of web publishing and design tools with Apple's new rack-mount server offers our customers the most complete solution for web development. We are pleased to build on our long standing relationship with Apple and deliver yet another powerful solution to the creative community."
4D
"Apple's new Xserve is incredibly powerful, reliable and simple to manage," said Laurent Ribardiere, CEO and founder of 4D. "Users will find that the combination of 4D, 4D WebSTAR V and Xserve provides a comprehensive, cutting-edge solution that fulfills all of their database and web serving needs."
Dantz
"Dantz Retrospect provides world-class backup software for the Mac and all of our products run on Apple's new Xserve," stated Larry Zulch, president and CEO of Dantz Development Corporation. "We are excited that Apple has brought its industry leading ease of use to a powerful new rack-mount server."
FileMaker
"FileMaker Pro 5.5 Unlimited is optimized to run on Mac OS X Server and take advantage of the integrated Apache Web Server," said Dominique Goupil, FileMaker's president. "Combined with the new Apple Xserve, Apple now delivers an even more powerful platform for deploying FileMaker solutions for business and education."
Platform
"By supporting Mac OS X, we can leverage our 10 years of experience in providing clustering solutions to UNIX customers to help Mac users improve productivity, performance and ROI," said Robert Gordon, Platform's CEO. "The powerful combination of Apple's new Xserve and Platform LSF workload management software enables digital content creation, higher education, government and life sciences organizations to fully utilize all of their enterprise compute resources."
Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, FireWire, QuickTime , Xserve, Server Admin and Server Monitor are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
SOURCE: Apple Computer Inc.
2 G4s per 1U?
<img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
The goal is not to make the latest and greatest uber server with eight G4's. The goal is to establish a beachhead in the server market and to shore up Apple accounts. Had Apple come out with a server that costs greater than $5,000, quite a few people would probably balk at the cost and complain that Apple was missing its market. FOr an entry level server, this is pretty good- better than Apple has done before.
As I said before, this machine does not seem to be render farm material. Perhaps Apple will eventually release a higher end server that supports quad processors or something like that. This is just speculation.
[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: Yevgeny ]</p>
<strong>SOFTWARE RAID???
2 G4s per 1U?
<img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
I believe I read somewhere on these forums that a 1U rack has never had a dual processor configuration. Is that accurate? Actually, 4 HD controllers & 4 drives sounds pretty amazing in a small unit.
<strong>SOFTWARE RAID???
2 G4s per 1U?
<img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
I don't know diddly 'bout dem dar RAIDs, x-epting they be good fer killing bugs.
However,
[quote]
Apple today also previewed its new high-performance RAID storage product featuring industry standard 2Gb Fiber Channel, which will be introduced later this year.
<hr></blockquote>
*\t3U height
*\t14 drive bays
*\t14 120GB ATA drives - in same hot-plug format as Xserve
*\t1.68TB
*\tDual 2GB Fibre Channel on system
*\t400MB/second storage throughput
RAID is all about data protection -- all critical components are redundant. Dual RAID controllers -- drives, power, cooling -- all redundant. 14 independent hard drives, and each RAID controller connects to seven of them. Each has an independent ATA controller that goes to the heart of the system. 128MB processor cache in the RAID processor. Redundant drive cache, redundant fans. Will be Available by the end of calendar year 2002.
[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: MacsRGood4U ]</p>
I believe I read somewhere on these forums that a 1U rack has never had a dual processor configuration. Is that accurate? Actually, 4 HD controllers & 4 drives sounds pretty amazing in a small unit.<hr></blockquote>
Actually, I was wondering how they got all those things stuff in a 1U rack myself. I thought it also said three PCI slots, and an AGP4x option. I think there was a hot-swapable kitchen sink as well.
You can't please all the people all the time
RAID is not all about data protection, it's about performance as well. with most RAID solutions you can get at 2x read speeds.
And there's the stigma of the combination of software and ATA RAID.
1) software RAID is slow (entirely true)
2) ATA disks are more cheaply made than SCSI disks (mostly true)
I don't think most people will bite. We bought a Sun A1000 12 disk SCSI RAID array for $6000 with an educational discount, 12x18 GB disks. That's roughly half of what it costs normally. If Apple can get this to educators for <$6000, then they may have something, but I doubt it...
[ 05-14-2002: Message edited by: Eugene ]</p>
<a href="http://www.apple.com/pr/photos/xserve/xserve.html"; target="_blank">http://www.apple.com/pr/photos/xserve/xserve.html</a>;
tell me your eyes didn't bug out at that rack full of xserves... gimminy! :eek:
<strong>Any Pics of the new Xserve?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Check Apple site. All infos are there.
640 Megaflops, as I have read or close to that.
Is that powerful enough?
These servers look pretty sweet. Those specs in a PowerMac would be nice. Obviously now its clear the G4 supports DDR, so either it is a newer G4 version, new mobo, or Apple is just shady as hell. Ultra ATA100, and is that FireWire 2 I see? I say if we get these features i a G5 it will be great.