[B]That's correct, however my point is you have a peak throughput of 400MB/s on the Xserve versus 160MB/s on the Dell. SCSI will be closer to peak that ATA, but not that much closer.
Whoa there... Don't use such a blanket statement.
Dell's newer servers are shipping with U320 SCSI. Also, depending on how you setup your RAID you can get more throughput. Don't compare an effective Quad Channel Xserve vs. a single channel SCSI while ignoring that most Dell's come with dual channel thus, by your numbers, effectively 320MB/s...or on their newer servers 640MB/s!
But, then again, anyone running a serious RAID is running an add-in card so the on-board RAID is only good for the OS anyhow!
I can tell you right now that the new database server setup I am testing is a failover cluster of Dell 2600's running RAID 1 on the internal U320 connected to an U160 external storage array with add-in RAID cards. During testing we were able to peak at nearly 580MB/s writes to the external U160 storage array.
The numbers and letters don't mean anything. There is a reason they are completely random. The reason is that if they wern't, it would be easy as s*** to find out all about Apple's upcoming products!
Yeah, I checked Dell's web site and they have dual channel 320 now in the 720. That's changed since I last checked. That's not bad at all.
SCSI is still way more expensive than IDE. The only use is when you absolutly need the very top performance and the lowest latency. And I don't know of any senarios where a modern IDE RAID (esp 10,000rpm SATA) won't suffice. I'm sure there are, but the number must be very limited.
Yeah, I checked Dell's web site and they have dual channel 320 now in the 720. That's changed since I last checked. That's not bad at all.
SCSI is still way more expensive than IDE. The only use is when you absolutly need the very top performance and the lowest latency. And I don't know of any senarios where a modern IDE RAID (esp 10,000rpm SATA) won't suffice. I'm sure there are, but the number must be very limited.
I agree about the pricing...but the gap has narrowed recently if you know where to purchase the drives.
Another thing that is considered when purchasing servers is compatability with other servers. I can order Dell 1650's with ATA drives for our cluster but it doesn't make any sense for me to save a few bucks just to have headaches when I need to quickly replace a drive.
I'm guessing here but I would guess that ATA drives would not hold up in our database servers. Try hitting a database with 30,000,000 records and about 26Gb of data with an AVERAGE of 500 questions/second and peaking at over 2400 questions/second all day every day!
I also am not familiar with hot-swapping of ATA hard drives. Most of our servers can NEVER go down and typically do not until they are replaced every couple years. With the hardware we are running we can replace drives and never go down if need be...BIG plus for us.
We have also questioned Apple's number in this chart:
Our 1650's are handling MUCH more dynamic page traffic than this using Apache. I stress MUCH, MUCH more...before we moved them to a cluster. We were serving up over 1000 clients per 1650 before going to the cluster.
My guys and I are wanting Apple to release a 970 based server. We would love to put one into our new database cluster to see how well it performs as compared to the Dell 2600's, 2650's and 1750's.
Personally I don't think Blackrider is Xserve related. ThinkSecret is not cryptic and would have said so, plus Q codenames have not been used on *any* Apple Server.
I also am not familiar with hot-swapping of ATA hard drives. Most of our servers can NEVER go down and typically do not until they are replaced every couple years. With the hardware we are running we can replace drives and never go down if need be...BIG plus for us.
There are no problems with hot swapping drives in Xserves or Xserve RAID.
Quote:
Originally posted by Mike
We have also questioned Apple's number in this chart:
Our 1650's are handling MUCH more dynamic page traffic than this using Apache. I stress MUCH, MUCH more...before we moved them to a cluster. We were serving up over 1000 clients per 1650 before going to the cluster.
And? Just because the chart stops at 170 it doesn't mean that the servers can't handle more than that.
All I can say that our Xserves run circles around Dell 1650s when running JBoss.
Personally I don't think Blackrider is Xserve related. ThinkSecret is not cryptic and would have said so, plus Q codenames have not been used on *any* Apple Server.
For the last time: The letter and two digit number that make up a code name are completely random.
Even if they weren't random, the current Xserve is "Q28". So there.
For the last time: The letter and two digit number that make up a code name are completely random.
Even if they weren't random, the current Xserve is "Q28". So there.
Barto
According to Mactracker the current Xserve is High Fidelity or Thing 2, no Apple Server has had a Q or P. P has been given to various items since Jobs return, the only previous Q was the Newton.
There are no problems with hot swapping drives in Xserves or Xserve RAID.
That's good to hear...I wasn't sure if the Xserve could hot-swap drives and rebuild on-the-fly as we can with SCSI.
Quote:
And? Just because the chart stops at 170 it doesn't mean that the servers can't handle more than that.
All I can say that our Xserves run circles around Dell 1650s when running JBoss.
Like I said...we were questioning Apple's results since there are no published details regarding their testing.
Regarding JBoss and/or Java... I can't comment regarding Java performance on the Dell's. We are not using Java to power our sites. We did some initial testing with Java but found it required too much horsepower for what we were needing to do and for how large we are. Besides, our experience was not in Java
Our Dell 1650 web servers stay around 10% cpu useage on a dual processor machine serving up about 40 million dynamic database pages monthly. I would LOVE to be able to start throwing some Xserves into the mix to see how well they do...although I doubt we will start using any Xserves in our web cluster any time soon. It is more likely that we will try them in our database cluster before that.
There are no problems with hot swapping drives in Xserves or Xserve RAID.
Uhh... have you tried it? I have. I swapped out a bad drive in a mirrored set in my Xserve and it was not nearly as plug/play as I needed it to be.
Now, I believe that to be a temporary problem that should be resolved in 10.3, and the Xserve RAID is a whole other animal, so I won't comment on that, but the Xserve isn't quite up to the challenge. Yet. It's much closer than Apple's been since the AWS, though.
q6 is a bluetooth keyboard that apple is working on, no idea if it will be released or demo'd at WWDC.
It looks like what's holding this up is making the out of box experience work, like figuring out how to auto pair with some security before you even login to the machine.
q6 is a bluetooth keyboard that apple is working on, no idea if it will be released or demo'd at WWDC.
It looks like what's holding this up is making the out of box experience work, like figuring out how to auto pair with some security before you even login to the machine.
That has a logical relationship to Blackrider, but I still feel wireless keyboards are gimmicks...
...unless Apple has successfully implemented wireless power, which is not impossible.
OK, it's not nearly as plug/play as we wanted it, but it's possible, and it's documented on Apple's website.
I'm not ragging on the machine - I love it and expect this to be fixed soon. But I didn't want someone running out buying an Xserve expecting to yank and juggle drives like some of the big RAIDs I've seen, that's all.
I'm not ragging on the machine - I love it and expect this to be fixed soon. But I didn't want someone running out buying an Xserve expecting to yank and juggle drives like some of the big RAIDs I've seen, that's all.
Just out of curiosity, what does swapping a drive in an Xserve involve?
Just out of curiosity, what does swapping a drive in an Xserve involve?
What we're talking about is the "simple" mirror option in OS X Server 10.2, which johnsonwax correctly points out to be not as easy as many would expect.
Picture this:
XServe (1) has 4 HD bays, all ATA 100 master drives. In bay 1 and 2 you place 120 GB IBM's HD, easily setup as a mirror. But, the drive in bay 2 gets some kind of default making you replace it by a new IBM 120 GB drive, exactly the same as the first two. Trouble now is repairing the mirror. It looks very simple using Disk Utility, but forget that. That doesn't work. You'll have to use the CLI, reading the documentation on Apple' site first, making the whole operation more time consuming, and more difficult than many would imagine.
Bottom line; yes, it works. But more trouble than you would expect.
q6 is a bluetooth keyboard that apple is working on, no idea if it will be released or demo'd at WWDC.
It looks like what's holding this up is making the out of box experience work, like figuring out how to auto pair with some security before you even login to the machine.
Yeah, and it runs a special build train of Mac OS X codenamed Blackrider!
Just out of curiosity, what does swapping a drive in an Xserve involve?
As a side note: Our SCSI Raid's are setup to rebuild automatically when a new drive is inserted while running. We already have the rebuild rate pre-programmed into the controller just in case 8)
Comments
Originally posted by Barto
[B]That's correct, however my point is you have a peak throughput of 400MB/s on the Xserve versus 160MB/s on the Dell. SCSI will be closer to peak that ATA, but not that much closer.
Whoa there... Don't use such a blanket statement.
Dell's newer servers are shipping with U320 SCSI. Also, depending on how you setup your RAID you can get more throughput. Don't compare an effective Quad Channel Xserve vs. a single channel SCSI while ignoring that most Dell's come with dual channel thus, by your numbers, effectively 320MB/s...or on their newer servers 640MB/s!
But, then again, anyone running a serious RAID is running an add-in card so the on-board RAID is only good for the OS anyhow!
I can tell you right now that the new database server setup I am testing is a failover cluster of Dell 2600's running RAID 1 on the internal U320 connected to an U160 external storage array with add-in RAID cards. During testing we were able to peak at nearly 580MB/s writes to the external U160 storage array.
I'm not meaning to nit-pick here
P58B is the minor revision.
The numbers and letters don't mean anything. There is a reason they are completely random. The reason is that if they wern't, it would be easy as s*** to find out all about Apple's upcoming products!
Yeah, I checked Dell's web site and they have dual channel 320 now in the 720. That's changed since I last checked. That's not bad at all.
SCSI is still way more expensive than IDE. The only use is when you absolutly need the very top performance and the lowest latency. And I don't know of any senarios where a modern IDE RAID (esp 10,000rpm SATA) won't suffice. I'm sure there are, but the number must be very limited.
Barto
Originally posted by Barto
Yeah, I checked Dell's web site and they have dual channel 320 now in the 720. That's changed since I last checked. That's not bad at all.
SCSI is still way more expensive than IDE. The only use is when you absolutly need the very top performance and the lowest latency. And I don't know of any senarios where a modern IDE RAID (esp 10,000rpm SATA) won't suffice. I'm sure there are, but the number must be very limited.
I agree about the pricing...but the gap has narrowed recently if you know where to purchase the drives.
Another thing that is considered when purchasing servers is compatability with other servers. I can order Dell 1650's with ATA drives for our cluster but it doesn't make any sense for me to save a few bucks just to have headaches when I need to quickly replace a drive.
I'm guessing here but I would guess that ATA drives would not hold up in our database servers. Try hitting a database with 30,000,000 records and about 26Gb of data with an AVERAGE of 500 questions/second and peaking at over 2400 questions/second all day every day!
I also am not familiar with hot-swapping of ATA hard drives. Most of our servers can NEVER go down and typically do not until they are replaced every couple years. With the hardware we are running we can replace drives and never go down if need be...BIG plus for us.
Here is what Apple is currently up against: http://www.dell.com/us/en/bsd/produc...pedge_1750.htm
We have also questioned Apple's number in this chart:
Our 1650's are handling MUCH more dynamic page traffic than this using Apache. I stress MUCH, MUCH more...before we moved them to a cluster. We were serving up over 1000 clients per 1650 before going to the cluster.
My guys and I are wanting Apple to release a 970 based server. We would love to put one into our new database cluster to see how well it performs as compared to the Dell 2600's, 2650's and 1750's.
Originally posted by Mike
I also am not familiar with hot-swapping of ATA hard drives. Most of our servers can NEVER go down and typically do not until they are replaced every couple years. With the hardware we are running we can replace drives and never go down if need be...BIG plus for us.
There are no problems with hot swapping drives in Xserves or Xserve RAID.
Originally posted by Mike
We have also questioned Apple's number in this chart:
Our 1650's are handling MUCH more dynamic page traffic than this using Apache. I stress MUCH, MUCH more...before we moved them to a cluster. We were serving up over 1000 clients per 1650 before going to the cluster.
And? Just because the chart stops at 170 it doesn't mean that the servers can't handle more than that.
All I can say that our Xserves run circles around Dell 1650s when running JBoss.
Originally posted by Blackcat
Personally I don't think Blackrider is Xserve related. ThinkSecret is not cryptic and would have said so, plus Q codenames have not been used on *any* Apple Server.
For the last time: The letter and two digit number that make up a code name are completely random.
Even if they weren't random, the current Xserve is "Q28". So there.
Barto
Originally posted by Barto
For the last time: The letter and two digit number that make up a code name are completely random.
Even if they weren't random, the current Xserve is "Q28". So there.
Barto
If it was COMPLETELY random you would have seen other letters than P and Q.
Originally posted by Barto
For the last time: The letter and two digit number that make up a code name are completely random.
Even if they weren't random, the current Xserve is "Q28". So there.
Barto
According to Mactracker the current Xserve is High Fidelity or Thing 2, no Apple Server has had a Q or P. P has been given to various items since Jobs return, the only previous Q was the Newton.
Originally posted by JLL
There are no problems with hot swapping drives in Xserves or Xserve RAID.
That's good to hear...I wasn't sure if the Xserve could hot-swap drives and rebuild on-the-fly as we can with SCSI.
And? Just because the chart stops at 170 it doesn't mean that the servers can't handle more than that.
All I can say that our Xserves run circles around Dell 1650s when running JBoss.
Like I said...we were questioning Apple's results since there are no published details regarding their testing.
Regarding JBoss and/or Java... I can't comment regarding Java performance on the Dell's. We are not using Java to power our sites. We did some initial testing with Java but found it required too much horsepower for what we were needing to do and for how large we are. Besides, our experience was not in Java
Our Dell 1650 web servers stay around 10% cpu useage on a dual processor machine serving up about 40 million dynamic database pages monthly. I would LOVE to be able to start throwing some Xserves into the mix to see how well they do...although I doubt we will start using any Xserves in our web cluster any time soon. It is more likely that we will try them in our database cluster before that.
Originally posted by JLL
There are no problems with hot swapping drives in Xserves or Xserve RAID.
Uhh... have you tried it? I have. I swapped out a bad drive in a mirrored set in my Xserve and it was not nearly as plug/play as I needed it to be.
Now, I believe that to be a temporary problem that should be resolved in 10.3, and the Xserve RAID is a whole other animal, so I won't comment on that, but the Xserve isn't quite up to the challenge. Yet. It's much closer than Apple's been since the AWS, though.
It looks like what's holding this up is making the out of box experience work, like figuring out how to auto pair with some security before you even login to the machine.
-sg
Originally posted by SGheh
q6 is a bluetooth keyboard that apple is working on, no idea if it will be released or demo'd at WWDC.
It looks like what's holding this up is making the out of box experience work, like figuring out how to auto pair with some security before you even login to the machine.
That has a logical relationship to Blackrider, but I still feel wireless keyboards are gimmicks...
...unless Apple has successfully implemented wireless power, which is not impossible.
Originally posted by johnsonwax
Uhh... have you tried it? I have. I swapped out a bad drive in a mirrored set in my Xserve and it was not nearly as plug/play as I needed it to be.
OK, it's not nearly as plug/play as we wanted it, but it's possible, and it's documented on Apple's website.
Originally posted by MacsRgr8
OK, it's not nearly as plug/play as we wanted it, but it's possible, and it's documented on Apple's website.
I'm not ragging on the machine - I love it and expect this to be fixed soon. But I didn't want someone running out buying an Xserve expecting to yank and juggle drives like some of the big RAIDs I've seen, that's all.
Originally posted by johnsonwax
I'm not ragging on the machine - I love it and expect this to be fixed soon. But I didn't want someone running out buying an Xserve expecting to yank and juggle drives like some of the big RAIDs I've seen, that's all.
Just out of curiosity, what does swapping a drive in an Xserve involve?
Originally posted by Alexander
Just out of curiosity, what does swapping a drive in an Xserve involve?
What we're talking about is the "simple" mirror option in OS X Server 10.2, which johnsonwax correctly points out to be not as easy as many would expect.
Picture this:
XServe (1) has 4 HD bays, all ATA 100 master drives. In bay 1 and 2 you place 120 GB IBM's HD, easily setup as a mirror. But, the drive in bay 2 gets some kind of default making you replace it by a new IBM 120 GB drive, exactly the same as the first two. Trouble now is repairing the mirror. It looks very simple using Disk Utility, but forget that. That doesn't work. You'll have to use the CLI, reading the documentation on Apple' site first, making the whole operation more time consuming, and more difficult than many would imagine.
Bottom line; yes, it works. But more trouble than you would expect.
Originally posted by SGheh
q6 is a bluetooth keyboard that apple is working on, no idea if it will be released or demo'd at WWDC.
It looks like what's holding this up is making the out of box experience work, like figuring out how to auto pair with some security before you even login to the machine.
Yeah, and it runs a special build train of Mac OS X codenamed Blackrider!
Barto
Originally posted by Alexander
Just out of curiosity, what does swapping a drive in an Xserve involve?
As a side note: Our SCSI Raid's are setup to rebuild automatically when a new drive is inserted while running. We already have the rebuild rate pre-programmed into the controller just in case 8)