What the future Xserve may be
The Register has a good article about Dell's future plans for servers based on AMD's Opteron 64 bit processor. The article mentions Newisys a new server company.
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/28366.html"; target="_blank">From the Register:</a>
[quote] It's a fascinating start-up, packed with distinguished stars from IBM. The CEO is Phil Hester, former CTO of IBM's PC division, general manager of the RS/6000 and one of the co-founders of the AIM (Apple/IBM/Motorola) alliance.
He's but one of several Unix veterans; the CTO is IBM Fellow Rich Oehler, who was the technical lead on the RS/6000; the chief finance guy looked after the S/390 business. Mike Maples, once Bill Gates' right-hand man, before he left Microsoft in 1995, is on the board. Forest Basket you might remember from DEC: he founded and led the Western Research Lab, and was CTO at Silicon Graphics. (And you surely can't forget such a wonderful name). There are strong connections to Dell, too. <hr></blockquote>
The first Newisys server is a 1U size and has dual AMD Opterons, up to 16 GB Ram, and Up to 146 GB in storage.
<a href="http://www.newisys.com/tech_specs.htm"; target="_blank">Full Specs</a>
I am not sure about the costs, but this thing easily beats the XServe in everything except storage capacity.
[ 11-30-2002: Message edited by: jante99 ]
[ 11-30-2002: Message edited by: jante99 ]
I edited the headline to more acurately describe the topic.
[ 12-01-2002: Message edited by: jante99 ]
[ 12-01-2002: Message edited by: jante99 ]</p>
Comments
Furthermore the Xserve will probably use the PPC970 in future revisions.
[ 11-30-2002: Message edited by: JLL ]</p>
And yeah, a dual PPC 970 Xserve will be there sometime down the road, so dont get your panties in a bunch
Newisys is also developing software to make their server easy to use. This seems very similar to Apple's server strategy.
[ 11-30-2002: Message edited by: JLL ]</p>
<strong>The Newisys server will run Linux and is being marketed as a low end server so I think it should be compared to the xServe. The server is supposed to com out in 2nd quarter of 2003.
[ snip ]
Newisys is also developing software to make their server easy to use. This seems very similar to Apple's server strategy.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There are a lot of "gonnas" and "wills" and so on in this.
When the product arrives, everyone will be able to compare it in terms of price, size, computational power, power consumption (VERY important in a data center), heat generation (VERY important in a data center), manageability, etc.
Until then, let's just say, "Hey, specs sound, it'll be interesting WHEN IT COMES OUT."
It's bad enough that so many people bash Apple for how their products compare to TODAY's products. Now we've got someone comparing products Apple is shipping TODAY to someone's product that MIGHT (we'll see it when it actually ships) ship SIX MONTHS from now. Sheesh.
P.S. Sorry...off my soap box now.
All in all thought it's great to see the evolution of Server. However 16GB of RAM is not big deal. Remember until Apple moves to 64bit with higher memory addressing for Apps 16GB won't be necessary. So I think you are looking at the possibility of a Dual 970 Xserve with equal specs. Apple should be positioned just fine here. I still can't wait to see how the Opteron performs however. Should be intersting to say the least.
<strong>The Newisys server will run Linux and is being marketed as a low end server so I think it should be compared to the xServe. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Just looking at what we know _now_, I'd say there will still be reasons to get an XServe. Four independently served drive bays makes a serious media server. 2 Opterons + 16GB RAM makes a serious number cruncher.
It doesn't look like a direct comparison. AltiVec also throws a curve ball into the mix. (That dual Opteron probably annihilates the current XServe in non-AV code, but when you can actually use AV... not so clear cut.)
The XServe will run Linux too. The server administration tools are pretty wild for the Xserve though, they seemed compelling to me.
For one, you got the capitalization on Xserve wrong. The 'X' is capitalized, not the 's.' Also, the 14 drive rackmountable
RAID array is not called xRAID, or XRAID, or Xraid, or anything like that. It will be called the Xserve RAID (and not the xServe RAID, XServer RAID, or anything like that.) This is one of my worst pet peeves; people who consider themselves Apple fanatics but cannot correctly name Apple's own hardware. </angry rant>
Secondly, comparing the hardware that company X will release in so many quarters with the hardware that Apple has now is just plain stupid. Of course Apple is going to update the Xserve before then, It's due for an update right now.
Newisys is an interesting new company. The entire mangement is made up of ex IBM Unix executives. The CEO founded the AIM alliance (Apple/IBM/Motorola) and one of the board members was once Bill Gates right hand man. Another subject could be why they chose AMD Opteron and not IBM's 970 proccesor? They obviously knew about the 970.
The server looks like it will directly compete with the Xserve. (Both will have dual 64 bit proccesors, easy management software, 1U size, etc)
I am willing to bet that the Xserve will have very similar specks to the Newisys server.
We do most of development work on MacOSX and Linux but all of our web servers are Dell servers running Linux.
We just purchased Dell 1650's for a new web cluster with 2xPIII 1.4's, 36G SCSI drive, 2xGBit NIC's, rack rails and 1.25G RAM for under $2,000.00 each. Compare that to a comparable Xserve at over $4,000.00 each.
Actually, if you want to compare the Xserve to a current Dell server you should compare it to the 2650 (similar pricing) which is a 2u machine. We have a few of the 2650's as well and Linux flat out SCREAMES on it!
Keep in mind that I have no PERSONAL experience with an Xserve but we do have a couple DP 1Ghz G4 workstations to compare it to.
I think I should just give up on this topic.
...sorry to be so critical.
<a href="http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2002/1202macmanage.html"; target="_blank">Here's another one.</a>
In addition, Apple recently added a journaling file system to Mac OS X, which allows larger file sizes and increases in performance.
This isn't what I have heard?
<strong>From the article
In addition, Apple recently added a journaling file system to Mac OS X, which allows larger file sizes and increases in performance.
This isn't what I have heard?</strong><hr></blockquote>
oops - seems to be a mistake ? i have heard something else about journaling too...
<strong>
This isn't what I have heard?</strong><hr></blockquote>
So he made a mistake, Apple still added journaling file system, which many customers either requested or required before using OS X server.
Point is more and more non-Apple centric news sites are mentioning Apple in very positive articles. Ever since Apple made the decision to use BSD Unix, I've felt their strategy was"we can't complete directly head to head w/ Microsoft let's try a back door." Win the hearts and minds of enough IT managers the rest may follow. Time to buy more Apple stock??
[ 12-06-2002: Message edited by: rickag ]</p>
The Newisys is probably a glimpse at some of the features of the future Xserve. (Obviously not the x86 processor). Apple will want to compete with this thing and make the specs pretty similar.