Why pick Apple's Rack mounts???
I was talking to my comp repair teacher today about the future Rack Mounts, after sharing with him my benign knowledge of rackmounts in general and pure speculation on Apple's rackmounts....he simply asked...why pick Apple's??? you can just put a x86 rackmount and work with that just as well. I really couldn't think of a generic-easy apple answer, now that in this scenario, I don't think the "ease of use" talk will work well. These are computer-very-literate people. well, care to share?
PS-Anyone here gonna get a rackmount system if/when they are released for your work or personal business?
PS-Anyone here gonna get a rackmount system if/when they are released for your work or personal business?
Comments
There are two obvious advantages that don't require much in the way of prediction: Plug-and-play setup, easy maintenance, and efficient use of space and (electrical) power. AltiVec and simple, efficient MP and clustering support are also possible selling points, and even Cocoa (because it can be used to develop applications quickly and efficiently, which is important for ultra-specialized and niche users).
Everything else is up in the air. But given that there is a significant demand for these things (I can't imagine that Steve took Jonathan Ive out into his garden and said, "build a computer that looks like that stone step"), I imagine that Apple is listening to the people who are asking them for a rackmounted machine, and designing it accordingly. Given that, they'll have no trouble selling it.
[ 05-07-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
<strong>Anyone here gonna get a rackmount system if/when they are released for your work or personal business?</strong><hr></blockquote>
An Apple rackmount will be able to run OSX-only server-side applications such as WebObjects, Darwin, Cocoa, Carbon, or combination of the above.
One big impediment that I hear over and over again from Web Developers is, "How are you gonna host OS X?" It's impossible to find a web hosting company that will deal with G4 towers. This form factor is a BIG deal to get the OSX flavor of Unix into the enterprise web server market.
I can think of some pretty neat things that Apple servers will be able to do that others can't easily. How about dynamic personalized PDF's generated on the fly by a Quartz image server? Pretty cool.
[ 05-07-2002: Message edited by: Target Practice ]</p>
<strong>PS-Anyone here gonna get a rackmount system if/when they are released for your work or personal business?</strong><hr></blockquote>
We will be buying a couple of them for the <a href="http://community.gamesmith.biz:800"; target="_blank">GameSmith</a> deployment servers. Assuming they're priced appropriately
<strong>-Anyone here gonna get a rackmount system if/when they are released for your work or personal business?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yeah I've got a couple of customers that I'd spec one for. Currently they they rackmount their Macs (Yosemites & Graphites) with Marathon rack kits ($200+). Machines are fileservers, filemaker servers, print servers. I don't need g4 for that 1000Mhz G3 seems about right. Also it has always driven me crazy that I gotta buy expensive video cards for machines that we mostly run headless (connect through Timbuktu mostly and occasionally using the monitor switch), plus stuff like cd burners that will never get used. I work in New York so space is at a premium, I can't give a whole room just to servers that sit on tabletops. They have to fit in a closet -- so rackmount is a necessity.
This is what I have been needing for a long time. I've been hoping for it ever since Eric Zelenka left webstar for Apple.
<strong>
An Apple rackmount will be able to run OSX-only server-side applications such as WebObjects, Darwin, Cocoa, Carbon, or combination of the above.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
WebObjects can be deployed on a Windows 2000 Server or on Solaris. If I was going for shear performance, I would probably deploy on a Sun rackmount system.
There is also a group of people trying to get WebObjects to run under linux, in which, your deployment options double exponentially.
<strong>
I can think of some pretty neat things that Apple servers will be able to do that others can't easily. How about dynamic personalized PDF's generated on the fly by a Quartz image server? Pretty cool.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I believe you can already do that with PHP...
Keep in mind like Amorph said, these are not targeted for you to buy and place on your desk and play Quake on. They are not targeting Pro-Sumers or Graphic Designers. What they are targeting is something like the place I am visiting on Saturday morning. A post-production facility with mutli-million dollar Avid and editing systems which use Pro Tools and a gob of other apps that need good fast processing power for rendering. You may say that you can get a Quad x86 AMD system for X amount of dollars...that means nothing. You would be amazed at the G4 and AltiVec's performance in rendering farm situations. These companies love the G4 for this stuff but they have always HATED the size.
If the eMac was said to be a customized CRT iMac for a particular group of education customers. The rack mounted Macintosh probably is a customized Macintosh for the customers
I don't think that those customers will be asking ?Why choose Apple??, because they already choosed Apple when they asked Apple for those rack mounted Macintosh.
Who knows? Maybe Pixar wanted those things for some of their test projects or one of their small projects. Projects that are just too small to bothered their main Sun rendering farm. Maybe they were one of the ones who asked for thed rack mounted Macintosh?
[ 05-07-2002: Message edited by: The Power of X ]</p>
I'm not saying that you won't see render-farm type machines, but I think that they will probably come with G5s (or other much faster chips with improved SIMD units) when those chips are ready and introduced in the desktop line.
Basically, you are looking at two VERY distinct and different markets, and a machine designed for one will not be very good for the other.
As for the original question of this thread, for education, there's plenty of reasons to go with a rackmount server setup, but mostly once the desktop machines move to OS X. Education would love servers that are easy to set up and maintain. Apple can offer a machine that can manage users/groups, disk quotas, mail quotas, run the webserver and Powerschool, manage NetBoot and Remote Desktop all with a nice GUI and provided by the SAME company that supplies the desktop machines. I think the future potential will be a bit draw for education as well, for things like utilities for tracking/managing mobile computer labs (or iBooks), filtering web content for the whole school, etc. And with the new Windows-compatibility improvements in Jaguar, they might even be able to manage the PCs in the school also. Education seems to love whole packages and comprehensive solutions. Apple seems to now be in a much better position to provide this.
Will you be able to use it as a regular ol' computer?
I can see people who are obsessed with power and space considerations buying a thin rackmount just to run as their primary computer, if it's possible.....not many of course, but there are a few people out there who would, especially perhaps hard-core dv editors.....
Can anyone fill me in?
TING5
<strong>My total server/render newbie question is this:
Will you be able to use it as a regular ol' computer?
I can see people who are obsessed with power and space considerations buying a thin rackmount just to run as their primary computer, if it's possible.....not many of course, but there are a few people out there who would, especially perhaps hard-core dv editors.....
Can anyone fill me in?
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Actually, musicians and DJs would be the biggest customers I could imagine for a single rackmount Mac. They use racks already for all manner of electronics, and some of them do things like shoehorn PowerBooks into racks currently.
However, it hinges on whether Jobs meant, when he said that they can be used headless, that they they could be used that way optionally, or preferentially, or exclusively. It's not uncommon for workgroup servers to have a Rage IIc or some similarly nominal video card in them to attach a monitor; it's more common for UNIX servers to expect a console attached via a modem or serial port; some offer a web interface via ethernet. Given that Apple is clearly offering a custom version of OS X for this Mac, and if the rumor is true that they will ship without hard drives, I'm deeply skeptical that these things could be used as conventional desktops - maybe if you worked really hard at it. You don't want to be running a big, heavy window server on one of these. That's not the point.
What a musician, or someone similarly interested in a single, rack-mounted Mac, would probably have to do is keep another Mac (or PC!) around and networked to the rack Mac.
But I'm guessing. It's impossible to say for certain until the 14th.
[ 05-07-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
<strong>Bodhi, I'm not so sure that what we'll see in a week is what you are expecting. From what various sites are reporting about what Steve Jobs said at WWDC is correct, these rackmounts will be targetted towards education primarily, acting as print, file, web and mail servers, as well as Netboot, etc. for education and small business.</strong><hr></blockquote>Yeah, I think you've hit it. Powerschool would be one such complete education package - you get the server hardware and software in one package.
I think there's no way this machine will be higher-performing than the current PowerMacs. This is all about the case, and that's it.
Yeah, I was wondering if you'd be able to use it for Avid. We have about twelve Macs in our rental fleet, would be cool to have something designed to rackmount.