Product of the Day: Real World Linux - Apple XServe 1U Server

by Vendor Written
on May 30, 2003
Product of the Day: Real World Linux - Apple XServe 1U Server

Product: Apple XServe 1U ServerManufacturer: Apple Canada Inc.Address: 7495 Birchmount Road               Markham, Ontario L3R 5G2 CANADATelephone: 905-513-5800URL: www.apple.com/xserve/

You Don't Pay the Dreaded Head Tax with Apple's XServe Servers

The Linux camp can look to Apple for a hardware/software solution that can be considered a new open source business model for hardware and software bundling, with the introduction of the XServe 1U server in May 2002. As with all Apple desktop hardware the software is bundled with it and this is no different with their server offerings. The XServe 1U server comes with Mac OS X Server software, a Unix- based operating system with an unlimited client license.

In a world where there are now three desktop operating systems in use where the finance department will be Windows, the marketing department will be on Macs and the research department is on Linux. The 1U server provides support for all these platforms. The Mac OS X Server operating system is a FreeBSD Unix based OS with a software architecture that includes open source services like - Apache, PHP, WebDAV, MySQL. The multimedia support includes Apple's QuickTime Stream Server, which has also been made available to the Open Source community, and Broadcaster.

Developer tools include Project Builder, Interface Builder, compilers, debugging and profiling tools. You can get the best of what Apple and Open Source has to offer in one neat package.

XServe IU Server Hardware Features

Processor

  • Single or dual-1.33GHz PowerPC G4s processors

  • 128 bit internal memory paths

  • 2MB DDR SRAM L3 cache per processor

Memory

  • 256MB or 512MB of PC2700 DDR SDRAM

  • Four DIMM slots supporting up to 2GB of 333MHz DDR SDRAM

Connections

  • Two 64-bit 66MHz PCI slots

  • Two 10/100/1000BASE-T RJ-45 Ethernet connectors

  • Two FireWire 800 ports

  • Two USB 1.2 ports

  • One DB-9 serial port

  • Flexible Scalable Storage

  • Four independent ATA/133 drive bays that hold up to 720GB of data

  • Slot-loading 24x-speed CD-ROM drive with optional DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo

Dimensions

  • 1.73" (4.4 cm) high by 17.6" (44.7 cm) wide by 28" (71.1 cm) deep

  • Fits industry standard 19" wide racks

In measuring web server performance, Xserve was tested against the Dell PowerEdge 1650 and the IBM eServer xSeries 335, both running Red Hat Linux: and the Sun LX50 Server running Sun Linux. All tests were run using Apache software. Xserve ran 29% faster than Dell, 47% faster than IBM and nearly 3x times as fast as Sun. The results demonstrates Apple commitment to the be a player in the web server market.

email: potd@ssc.com

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