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OK, Mac, Windows, Linux or otherwise, I know absolutely NOTHING about the rackmount server market, so I haven't a clue if Apple's new xServe offerings are a Good or Bad thing.

Knock yourselves out:

http://www.apple.com/xserve/

--BlueDjinn

It looks nice. It's the first 1U I've seen with 3 PCI slots but you still lose one to the video card. It should work well for all Mac environments.

I love how their 'fastest' configuration which comes in at $7,799 doesnt even come with scsi. You call that a server?

erm... the one you are refering to is not 'fastest' but 'ulitmate'

Yes Apple decided to go with IDE and not SCSI; not sure why; I would assume it has to do with their target markets. You can, of course, add a SCSI card or two in the PCI slots available.

No SCSI?!!?

One word:

STOOOPID!!!!!!

That is the dumbest idea I've ever seen. To get any kind of decent transfer rate you'd have to put one drive on a IDE channel. That is a lot of connectors if you wanted a number of drives. Or damn stupid if your putting multiple drives on a channel. One SCSI controller can handle 15 devices in a channel and talk to them at the same time.

The only time I 've see it done like that is when you have a bunch of clustered servers connected to a SAN. Just the system OS on the ATA drive in the server with nothing but SCSI drives in the SAN cabinet. Gee! I wonder why?

SCSI=woot
IDE=ugh

Apple must realize that Mac data is worth less than PC data .

It seems the target market for these things is for multimedia use where massive capacity is needed more than ultimate speed. It also looks like each drive gets its own channel which gets rid of that bottleneck if you set up software RAID on it. It's not bad for a first attempt at a server, it does have a couple features I'd like to see on PC 1U servers (more PCI slots, onboard gigabit). Apple will find out soon enough if they should have had internal SCSI as an option...

Saw this rip on Ars about the drives.

"Apple Drive Modules use 7200rpm ATA/100 hard disk drives. Each drive has an independent Ultra ATA/100 bus, an arrangement that allows maximum individual drive performance without choking the throughput of the other drives. The ATA drive subsystem has a high-bandwidth I/O bus that minimizes bottlenecks, even when all four drives are engaged at once. That’s how Xserve can achieve a theoretical peak performance of up to 266 megabytes per second, compared to a 160MB/s theoretical performance with SCSI Ultra160 disk drives — at a significantly lower cost, and while generating less heat than SCSI drives."

Coldfirex wrote:

Saw this rip on Ars about the drives.

"Apple Drive Modules use 7200rpm ATA/100 hard disk drives. Each drive has an independent Ultra ATA/100 bus, an arrangement that allows maximum individual drive performance without choking the throughput of the other drives. The ATA drive subsystem has a high-bandwidth I/O bus that minimizes bottlenecks, even when all four drives are engaged at once. That’s how Xserve can achieve a theoretical peak performance of up to 266 megabytes per second, compared to a 160MB/s theoretical performance with SCSI Ultra160 disk drives — at a significantly lower cost, and while generating less heat than SCSI drives."

My whole thought on that is that for it to be 266mb/s it MUST be ata133 and dual channel (which ide doesn't support) ata100 it called ata100 why? hmm...

No, it is ATA 100, four drives, four separate controllers. Max theoretical is 266; just like max theoretical for SCSI 160 is 160. Neither will be reached in real world.


enjoy

resteves2 wrote:

No, it is ATA 100, four drives, four separate controllers. Max theoretical is 266; just like max theoretical for SCSI 160 is 160. Neither will be reached in real world.


enjoy

Ummm...it is called scsi160 for the same reason it is called ata100. Both are the theoretical maximums...

The number work make sense if it were 4 ATA 66 controllers. Maybe the number is referring to a chipset level bandwidth limit?

My guess is they're using something like the Promise TX4 which operates on a 32bit 66MHz PCI bus - 266MB/s.

I don't care if it is ATA133.

I still think it is a dumb idea. And if I'm paying that much for a server it better damn well have SCSI.

FOOLS!!!!

z-man wrote:

I don't care if it is ATA133.

I still think it is a dumb idea. And if I'm paying that much for a server it better damn well have SCSI.

FOOLS!!!!

OK, as I said in the first place, I know very little about servers, but what exactly is the advantage of SCSI drives over ATA (assuming, for the sake of argument, that it's ATA133)?

My understanding is that SCSI drives are somewhat faster, but that ATA drives (at least ATA100 and 133) are capable of higher capacities, and are cheaper.

If this is correct, I'd say that it depends on whether the faster speed is worth smaller capacity and paying more, on a case-by-case basis, no?

Or is there some other SCSI advantage I'm missing here?

--BlueDjinn

Does it matter if it has scsi or ATA drives?

NO intermediate to major network will put something like this on there network for anything more then file server work. I highly doubt that any respectable CIO would consider putting something like this on there network, with the exception being places like SGI and such (although i hear they switched from mac based pc's to intel based pc's)

rcrijkse wrote:

Does it matter if it has scsi or ATA drives?

NO intermediate to major network will put something like this on there network for anything more then file server work. I highly doubt that any respectable CIO would consider putting something like this on there network, with the exception being places like SGI and such (although i hear they switched from mac based pc's to intel based pc's)

Um...ok, but that doesn't really answer my question (assuming you intended to)...WHY is SCSI better, aside from being (apparently) somewhat faster?

--BlueDjinn

Cuz its faster

"SCSI's ability to perform overlapped I/O and command queuing.

Unlike EIDE, SCSI supports devices connected to your computer externally. With EIDE, all devices that you connect must reside inside the computer box. This can present some obvious configuration and capability limitations. SCSI also offers parity-based error checking to maximize the probability of error-free data transmission. Additionally, the choice of EIDE devices is limited currently to hard disk drives, CD-ROMs and tape drives, while SCSI devices include hard disk drives, CD-ROMs, WORMs, Optical devices, scanners, tape drives, and many others."

Coldfirex wrote:

Cuz its faster

Coldfire--

OK, fair enough, but that takes us right back to your earlier post:

"...That’s how Xserve can achieve a theoretical peak performance of up to 266 megabytes per second, compared to a 160MB/s theoretical performance with SCSI Ultra160 disk drives — at a significantly lower cost, and while generating less heat than SCSI drives."

So, assuming that this is true, then it appears that these particular ATA drives are faster, higher-capacity, cheaper, and cooler than SCSI, if I'm reading everything correctly.

Which means that the "no-SCSI-no-way" crowd is just pissing into the wind for no particular reason.

Don't get me wrong, I'm hardly the rah-rah, Jobs-is-God type that many other Mac advocates are, but it astonishes me that so many on this board are unwilling to admit that Apple just might OCCASSIONALLY come out with a better, smarter, and even cheaper product than the competition. For heavens' sake, they wouldn't have outlasted almost every other PC maker for the past 25 years without getting things right ONCE in a while.

And if the early response is any indication, it sounds like the Xserve is one of those times.

--BlueDjinn

z-man

So, even if it is faster, cheaper, cooler, larger....they are still fools???

That is mighty open-minded of you.
And it doesn't really matter which ATA it is, since it only has one drive on it, it won't hit the max peak anyway.


Blue,
SCSI can hit 10k and 15k rpm, which makes them considerably faster. Plus they tend to last longer, though how much longer depends on which models you look at.
But they are also a *lot* more expensive, and run hotter. One xServe can hold 480 GB of HD. If you tried to do that with SCSI, it would be *Stoopid* expensive, and would probably melt your rack.

For a Dell to go from 18 GB to 220, it costs an extra $2000; and you will most likely have heating problems, especially if you try and fill the rack with these.
The xServe goes from 60 to 480 for $1650. And I would assert that the price delta would be even greater if you both the drives from third party.


rceijske,
would you care to elaborate as to *why* you think they wouldn't? (not that I necessarily disagree, just would like to hear your reasoning.) Plus, Apple only has one rack server, it is not meant to please every possible situation



coldfirex
"Unlike EIDE, SCSI supports devices connected to your computer externally. [snip]. Additionally, the choice of EIDE devices is limited currently to hard disk drives, CD-ROMs and tape
drives, while SCSI devices include hard disk drives, CD-ROMs, WORMs, Optical devices, scanners, tape drives, and
many others."

But why is this important in this situation? First of all, we are talking about why the IDE *hard drives* are good/bad; it isn't really relevant that you could connect a scanner or not. Besides, how often do you choose an entire server design based on the ability of connecting a DVD player or scanner??

And you forget, these also have USB, and Firewire. It even has one firewire port in front. I know of one guy that is looking forward to being able to use his iPod to boot the xServe, and run diagnostics, or whatever.


I guess the question is, how is SCSI better when IDE will give 400% more storage, for 20% less cost. And won't melt your rack.

Now, yes I know there are situations, and RAID flexibility is one of them, but it sure seems like there are also lots of situations where the extra storage/cost would be way worth it.

It seems like Apple has figured a way around the IDE speed problem and can still take advantage of RAID (to an extent) and cheap pricing.


enjoy

Coldfirex wrote:

Cuz its faster

"SCSI's ability to perform overlapped I/O and command queuing.

Unlike EIDE, SCSI supports devices connected to your computer externally. With EIDE, all devices that you connect must reside inside the computer box. This can present some obvious configuration and capability limitations. SCSI also offers parity-based error checking to maximize the probability of error-free data transmission. Additionally, the choice of EIDE devices is limited currently to hard disk drives, CD-ROMs and tape drives, while SCSI devices include hard disk drives, CD-ROMs, WORMs, Optical devices, scanners, tape drives, and many others."

Some of those features have been incorporated into the newer ATA standards (command queuing, CRC checking) but I don't know if the XServe supports it.

BlueDjinn wrote:

So, assuming that this is true, then it appears that these particular ATA drives are faster, higher-capacity, cheaper, and cooler than SCSI, if I'm reading everything correctly.

Not really, transfer rate is only one piece of the puzzle. Most enterprise class SCSI drives have a higher spindle speed and lower seek times which lets them access data much faster than most ATA drives, especially under heavy load. The firmware in SCSI drives are also tuned for better performace with server type loads, ATA drives are generally tuned for better desktop performance. I'll bet you G4's to Durons that if 4 SCSI drives on an U160 card were benched against 4 ATA drives on the internal ATA in an XServe, the SCSI drives would win in most typical high end server tasks.

That said it's probably better that Apple went ATA with this thing considering their target market.

resteves2 wrote:

It seems like Apple has figured a way around the IDE speed problem and can still take advantage of RAID (to an extent) and cheap pricing.

They didn't find their way around anything. Promise has had a 4 channel ATA card available for at least half a year and it also can do 266MB/s in a 66MHz PCI slot.

z-man wrote:

I don't care if it is ATA133.

I still think it is a dumb idea. And if I'm paying that much for a server it better damn well have SCSI.

And exactly how much scsi storage do you think you should get for an $8000 machine? Its unfortunate that they chose ide, but the price isn't the problem I don't think.

Steel wrote:

Not really, transfer rate is only one piece of the puzzle. Most enterprise class SCSI drives have a higher spindle speed and lower seek times which lets them access data much faster than most ATA drives, especially under heavy load. The firmware in SCSI drives are also tuned for better performace with server type loads, ATA drives are generally tuned for better desktop performance. I'll bet you G4's to Durons that if 4 SCSI drives on an U160 card were benched against 4 ATA drives on the internal ATA in an XServe, the SCSI drives would win in most typical high end server tasks.

That said it's probably better that Apple went ATA with this thing considering their target market.

Steel--

OK, fair enough...so, they went with ATA because their target market--digital video rendering houses, graphics production houses, etc.--massive storage is even more important than ultra-speed...which is just fine, considering they're new at this, it's wisest to stick with the markets they know best anyway. Dipping their toes into semi-familiar waters, so to speak.

I'm sure if this is a success, they'll branch out into more varied types of server setups.

--BlueDjinn

bluejin wrote:

That’s how Xserve can achieve a theoretical peak performance of up to 266 megabytes per second, compared to a 160MB/s theoretical performance with SCSI Ultra160 disk drives — at a significantly lower cost, and while generating less heat than SCSI drives."

So, assuming that this is true, then it appears that these particular ATA drives are faster, higher-capacity, cheaper, and cooler than SCSI, if I'm reading everything correctly.

Which means that the "no-SCSI-no-way" crowd is just pissing into the wind for no particular reason.

Don't get me wrong, I'm hardly the rah-rah, Jobs-is-God type that many other Mac advocates are, but it astonishes me that so many on this board are unwilling to admit that Apple just might OCCASSIONALLY come out with a better, smarter, and even cheaper product than the competition. For heavens' sake, they wouldn't have outlasted almost every other PC maker for the past 25 years without getting things right ONCE in a while.

And if the early response is any indication, it sounds like the Xserve is one of those times.

ITs not that its a "bad" product per se. Just one that when compared to the rest of the industry it doesn't compete with the other offerings out there. IM not gonna get into a debate on wether x86 architecture is better or not, but its a proven fact that for the same configuration you can get a dually athlon, intel p4 that has twice the mhz and performs better. SCSI also has always been a better choice then IDE, wether your looking at independant channels for each ata drive or not. SCSI allows you to add many more peripherals to each port then IDE does. Yes its more expensive but for a server configuration you want to have choice and scalability per single server.

IM not gonna get into a debate on wether x86 architecture is better or not, but its a proven fact that for the same configuration you can get a dually athlon, intel p4 that has twice the mhz and performs better

So the OS doesn't cost anything? Do you know how much win2k server is w/ 25 client licenses? yes, around 3500.

Linux? well yes linux is free, assuming you dont want anyone to actually run it. 2 people at 70k per year kinda inches up the price on running a linux cluster. not to mention cluster management software.

Steel

I'll bet you G4's to Durons that if 4 SCSI drives on an U160 card were benched against 4
ATA drives on the internal ATA in an XServe, the SCSI drives would win in most typical high end server tasks.

Well, how about 3 scsi's on one controller, versus 4 IDE's on 4 separate controllers?? I ask because I don't know, theoretically, it is 266 to 160, but I don't know about real world...

In any case, no one is saying that IDE is better, just that the way Apple implemented it (controller per drive) cuts down the speed delta some (no, not all) and gives you other advantages. (price, size, temp) Top of the line should be scsi; but doesn't mean it is needed in all cases.

Like I said, the Dell 1650 has scsi. For $2400 you get 3 drives at 10k, all on one controller, for 220GB xServe, for $2000 you get 4 drives at 7.2K on 4 controllers, for 480 GB. Yeah, scsi is better...but how much better...??

That said, I think we mostly agree on this.

They didn't find their way around anything. Promise has had a 4 channel ATA card available for at least half a year
and it also can do 266MB/s in a 66MHz PCI slot.

I didn't mean to imply that they did anything special, or that "only Apple" could do this. I just meant that they chose to use one controller per drive, which makes the bus not be the bottleneck, and cuts down one of the scsi advantages.


rcrijske

Just one that when compared to the rest of the industry it doesn't
compete with the other offerings out there. IM not gonna get into a debate on wether x86 architecture is better
or not, but its a proven fact that for the same configuration you can get a dually athlon, intel p4 that has twice
the mhz and performs better.

You are making assumptions... you should really go price these things first. Since these just came out, I don't know how it can be a "proven fact". Go check out the x86 equivalent, I think you will find them *very* competitively priced. (especially if you get MS to go on it) And then check out the management utilities that Apple provides...

SCSI allows you to add many more peripherals to each port then
IDE does. Yes its more expensive but for a server configuration you want to have choice and scalability per single
server.

Huh? did you get a chance to read my other post? How does the HD choice have anything to do with the external options? As for choice, xServe has USB and firewire, why does it need scsi for peripherals? And if it *really* does, you can get a scsi card for the PCI slots.
As for scalability.... how about being able to scale to 480 GB in a 1U server? Or be able to afford more servers? Off the top of my head, I think I can afford 3 xserves for the price of 2 Dells, assuming same storage.

Still waiting to hear why an intermediate network would never use these xservers??


enjoy

resteves2 wrote:

Yeah, scsi is better...but how much better...??

One word: Hotswap

IDE drive are not hotswapable. You still have to power down the server and change the drive.

Being able to changed a failed drive without shutting down the server has always made my life easier.

Next word: 15000 RPMs

Ok, so it is more then one word, sue me.

But what it the fastest IDE drive 7200.

I don't know about you but that is twice as fast. Would you rather write a CR-R at 2x or 8x. Same difference here.

I don't care what the arguement is, IDE in a production server environment for data storage is just a bad idea. Simple servers in a cluster is fine.

One word: Hotswap

Sorry, you have old info. The xServe IDE drives are hotswappable.

Next word: 15000 RPMs

yep, that is faster, and better. But again *how much* better. using the Dell/Apple comparo, if you want 15K, The dell will give 108GB for $2100; and all three will go through one 160 MB/s bus
The xServe will give $480GB, and through 4 different busses. Slightly less cost, 4.5X the storage, more throughput...but yes, longer seek times.

Let me ask you, why do 10K drives still sell?? Afterall, if faster is always better, why would anyone get 10K drives. Because there is a trade-off of speed for cost and size. Just like going with a 7.2K

What if that 8x CDRW was $1000, and the 2X was $200; and you never needed CD's in a hurry, etc.

It is all about trade-offs; there are some situations where the scsi is definitely the best choice, but why do you assume that it is true for all situations?