Anyone catch Apple's new XServe RAID?

[Go3iverson]

Just curious to see if anyone else caught the new hardware this morning. I know opinions of Apple here are extremely varied, but it seems like they're coming out with tons of new, innovative, hardware these days. This has got to be about the 4th straight week of a new product coming out.

Now they have an XServe and an XServe RAID...

In short, they have a regular 1U machine....supporting either single or dual 1.33GHz G4's, up to 720GB of storage, FireWire 800, Dual Gigabit, Mac OS X Server Unlimited......that's the short of the 1U option.

They have a RAID option that supports up to 2.52TB in 14 hot-swap drives, a 2Gb Fibre channel...etc etc etc....

Here's the new line up...

Any opinions, without turning this into a flame war, please.

Mike D

 

[Draco]

I think they are uber cool. If I had a need for a good 1U web server, I'd strongly consider their's. Of course the cost could be a deterrant, but they features they've built into that machine look very appealing.

 

[ViRGE]

I've had a chance to take a look at the specs of a RAID(although not an actual machine; damn accounting office ), and I have to admit I'm impressed. 720GB of hardware RAID storage for $6000, and only another $500 for an FC card is one heck of a deal, especially at only 3U's. I haven't seen many good RAID systems that cheap, and even fewer that come with the sort of touch Apple gives a machine.

The new Xserves are also nice, with 720GB of storage in a 1U design(Raid 0/1 only), along with Apple's supurb configuration tools. I'm using an original one as a file server right now, and it rocks. The 1000baseT ethernet port, along with the Firewire ports, NetBoot/Install support, and those little blue LEDs really add some topping to the machine. I am quite convinced that Apple is one of the best low-end *nix server vendors out there, and with the new RAID, they're movin' on up.

 

[dannybin1742]

its all IDE crap though, the reason people use scsi raid and drives is superiority in speed, access times, and very low cpu utilization. i garuntee if you put 10 15krpm scsi drives in a raid 5 array, they would totally beat up on a 20 or so eide drives in raid.

i'm impress with their inovations though, i think apple is heading in the right direction thought, if only their use amd or intel processors........

i thought that xserve figure using blast was just a riot, most data bases that the goverment runs now a days are run by cold war super computers, such as the sdsc in san diego, which is an even larger database than one that the nih runs

 

[RGN]

Originally posted by: dannybin1742
its all IDE crap though, the reason people use scsi raid and drives is superiority in speed, access times, and very low cpu utilization. i garuntee if you put 10 15krpm scsi drives in a raid 5 array, they would totally beat up on a 20 or so eide drives in raid.

uhh, you can only fit 14 drives in the Xserve. 14 36GB 15K hot swap SCSI drives would cost $6200 just for the drives. Then top storage would be 500GB. I think your comparison is not valid.

Remember its all about application.

 

[FreshPrince]

I think it looks sharp!

however, for 5Gs, I can build a 1.8TB ide raid 5 system with hot swap drives and redundant power.

Apple is still too expensive, but I think they're going in the right direction though.

 

[RGN]

Originally posted by: FreshPrince
I think it looks sharp!

however, for 5Gs, I can build a 1.8TB ide raid 5 system with hot swap drives and redundant power.

Apple is still too expensive, but I think they're going in the right direction though.

with those crappy compgeeks trays?

 

[FreshPrince]

Originally posted by: RGN

Originally posted by: FreshPrince
I think it looks sharp!

however, for 5Gs, I can build a 1.8TB ide raid 5 system with hot swap drives and redundant power.

Apple is still too expensive, but I think they're going in the right direction though.

with those crappy compgeeks trays?

no

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: FreshPrince
I think it looks sharp!

however, for 5Gs, I can build a 1.8TB ide raid 5 system with hot swap drives and redundant power.

Apple is still too expensive, but I think they're going in the right direction though.

Not with the same specs though.

 

[FreshPrince]

Originally posted by: Eug

Originally posted by: FreshPrince
I think it looks sharp!

however, for 5Gs, I can build a 1.8TB ide raid 5 system with hot swap drives and redundant power.

Apple is still too expensive, but I think they're going in the right direction though.

Not with the same specs though.

You're right, in order for the xserve raid to run in full specs, it would require fibre channel capable server. In this case you'll need to buy a base server + fibre channel card, which bring the total price to be $9300 = 6000+2800+500

Not to mention how apple is going to squeeze 400MB/s through gigabit eth0? /me scratches head...

edit: oops, correction, that's squeeze 500MB/s through gigabit eth0. Can someone explain why there are only 200MB/s bandwidth in a 2Gb fibre channel? where's the other 50MB/s go?

 

[ViRGE]

I was just reading through the specs, and figured that this would be worth sharing with everyone. In a full drive(14 drive) configuration, there is a total of 46 blue LEDs that indicate drive and bandwidth usage. The blue LED's were sort of overdone in the Xserve; I'm glad to see Apple has kept up with the tradition in the Xserve RAID.

 

[FreshPrince]

green led > blue led

 

[AtomicDude512]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
I've had a chance to take a look at the specs of a RAID(although not an actual machine; damn accounting office ), and I have to admit I'm impressed. 720GB of hardware RAID storage for $6000, and only another $500 for an FC card is one heck of a deal, especially at only 3U's. I haven't seen many good RAID systems that cheap, and even fewer that come with the sort of touch Apple gives a machine.

The new Xserves are also nice, with 720GB of storage in a 1U design(Raid 0/1 only), along with Apple's supurb configuration tools. I'm using an original one as a file server right now, and it rocks. The 1000baseT ethernet port, along with the Firewire ports, NetBoot/Install support, and those little blue LEDs really add some topping to the machine. I am quite convinced that Apple is one of the best low-end *nix server vendors out there, and with the new RAID, they're movin' on up.

Wow! Does that mean that it can run a modified Windows???

 

[sharkeeper]

Please!

If I were to recommend IDE storage around here, I would be told to take a 200 meter walk on a 50 meter dock and French kiss a Sand Tiger Shark! :Q

Cheers!

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: AtomicDude512

Originally posted by: ViRGE
I've had a chance to take a look at the specs of a RAID(although not an actual machine; damn accounting office ), and I have to admit I'm impressed. 720GB of hardware RAID storage for $6000, and only another $500 for an FC card is one heck of a deal, especially at only 3U's. I haven't seen many good RAID systems that cheap, and even fewer that come with the sort of touch Apple gives a machine.

The new Xserves are also nice, with 720GB of storage in a 1U design(Raid 0/1 only), along with Apple's supurb configuration tools. I'm using an original one as a file server right now, and it rocks. The 1000baseT ethernet port, along with the Firewire ports, NetBoot/Install support, and those little blue LEDs really add some topping to the machine. I am quite convinced that Apple is one of the best low-end *nix server vendors out there, and with the new RAID, they're movin' on up.

Wow! Does that mean that it can run a modified Windows???

Actually, you're pretty close. It's a standard issue RAID configuration, in that it can be hooked up in to any other fiber channel card. As such, you can hook it up to a Windows machines and control it(the control app is Java based) just fine.