Does anybody know anything about the Apple Servers?

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

I am thinking about the best servers to purchase and so far I have came up with:

Dell
IBM
Cobalt (last resort)

The only reason that I pose this question is because I don't here many people speaking about them. What server would you choose out of the four listed above?

Thank you a million!

The new Apple servers do look cool, however, I don't know about for a server.

We use Dell PowerEdge servers. We have hundreds of them and I can count the hardware failures we have had on my hands and all but one or two of those were hard drives. They are also great with their service and warranty.

I can't say enough good things about Dell servers. Dell has been in the server business for several years and are either #1 or #2 int he market. Apple is just getting into the market.

If it were my business, I would wait for them to prove themselves.

Just my $.02. We are adamant about quality and reliability, Dell has won our vote over and over.

If you choose the Apple, let us know how you like it.

Is this for virtual hosting, application hosting, or what?

I wouldn't try an Apple server until I have read several wonderful reviews on them.

The one thing I would concered with would be purchasing a server based on looks. The box will just sit in the data center so don't be deceived by a shiney box --- its whats under the hood thats important.

Mac OS X, is very reliable, and provides very good performance.
I do know that, the G4 server that I played with once, gained almost no load, when streaming 20 Live Quicktime streams.

They also have some pretty nice server management tools, from what I have read.

we've had two of them at work for a couple of months and we're looking to purchase 5 - 10 more as we migrate to an all mac shop. No - I'm not a mac nazi - but they just plain work.

The xserve is an awsome piece of technology. The management tools are simply awsome. I don't know how well they'd work out for like.. shared hosting or virtual hosting or whatever - main because of the lack of a control panel suck as cpanel, plesk, or ensim.

They are however excellent as file servers - which is what we use them for. We also use one for an os x net boot server - which allows our workstations to net boot off of it. If anyone has ANY questions please feel free to contact me - it might be possible for a demo (via ssh / the remote management tools.)

-neil

Cool to know and thanks for the info, they do seem very nice and it's nice to know someone who uses them!

The XServes rock as far as I'm concerned. I've used Dells which are good, but I still like the XServes better now. Using Mac OS X for hosting is quite a treat. I would love to see cpanel ported to it. Things I've noticed:

Mac OS X is more stable so far than linux
My customers are happier and the xserves are snappier than alot of the other servers I have
The managment tools are the best I have ever seen.
You can get tenon iTools suite (not from apple) to manage dns and all the other aspects of virtual hosting.
The hardware has faster memory than pc servers 333
The hardware on this machine is elegant as well. It's the easiest server by far to get into quickly.
Mac OS X provides good unix security, and in my opinion is more secure than redhat.
Mac OS X is based of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and a few other variants. It draws the best out of each variant of unix. tcp/ip stack out of netbsd, ect..

I would recommend checking out the new Mac OS X jagaur 10.2 Server (it's apples next OS version) It has even more advanced features over the current os version and will be out on the 24th of August. $20 upgrade if you buy a xserve now.

Also another thing is I'll take apple tech support over dell tech support anyday!

So far I'm really happy! I was skeptical about trying out a "mac" solution, but it's no different than a *itching freebsd with a sweet gui. I'm hooked!

If you were to run an OSX Web Server, would it have all the capabilities of a Linux server? I know it is based upon Unix, however that doesn't tell me whether it supports most of Linux's programs (PHP, BIND, etc).

bind, php, apache, mysql - etc are all available for it.

Interesting. I guess know all I would like to know how OSX server performs.

The Xserver is a great server. we have one at school for a file server and they are just good. but the webserver that i use at school is just a normail mac server it hasnt crashed in over a year. rather than using the onboard server with osx server i would use webstar (). it is much better to admin. also here are some sites that are hosted on os x servers:

http://www.chehalis.k12.wa.us
http://www.hewittco.com

Also the voting system for washington state is ran on mac servers..

good luck

William

Yikes! I never though I would ever see these many promac users.

I'm wondering if dedicated hosting companies will soon offer this OSX Web Server solution? I'm thinking it is a bit pricy, just because that is the way the Macintosh OS is. Please feel me in :) .

Really macs arent that expensive if you try to mach the price with a linux rack. I mean go look for yourself.

I am wondering how that could be? Linux is practically free, and I know Macintosh is not. I know that for a fact because Apple tried to get away with making Macintosh so expensive, but then people started to turn away from it because of that.

I personally use a Mac Powerbook and I run bind, sendmail, apache, php, and mysql on it with awesome performance for development. I used to be a windows and linux user, but the mac now gives the best of both worlds.

-Robert

os x is the best os i ever used.

good to see other mac users here :)

Wow. Never imagined the xserve would be any good.. I'd love to see a demo. They should set some up in the apple stores.

I think that at the stores they do have a demo of the xserver. also they are a VERY deep server. Compaired to most rack mount servers they are very deep.

Will

hmm. they are not any more expensive than dell servers or any deeper than dell poweredge. The dual 1ghz xserve was said to outperform the dual 1.4 pentium in the dell because of the faster ram.

I love the managment tools, if your not familar with apple, apple is big on "elegance" every piece of software they write looks like it has been polished for 5 years or something. I had the privledge of beta testing the jaguar 10.2 server coming out in august and the admin tools are even nicer. Currently it comes with a monitor tool that lets you monitor as many xserves as you want, it has a tabbed inface and shows you the tempeture, cpu load, drives, power, network, blowers, and security. it allows you to monitor all the services and be notified instantly via all the usually options. I've seen alot of monitoring software in my day, but this one just works like you would expect a nearly perfect one to. There are a host of tools to remotely maintain the server. There are 4 other tools that ship with it. One tool lets you login to remotely monitor the logs for wierd occurances and be notified whenever you choose.

As for unix tools you can use anything you want, it's unix after all, there is even a tool called FINK, much like the PPM for perl. which downloads and installs all the latest unix software for you if you'd like. or you can use make or GCC to build.them. Someone said apple is the first company to ship GCC 3.1.x as the offical unix compiler, not sure on this.


You can install any open source control panel, however it would really really be nice to see cpanel ported, it wouldn't be that hard since they ported to freebsd already. For now until then cpanel is perfect for business customers who demand excellent or need top notch solutions. I will put virtual hosting customers on when I get my hands on cpanel.

If you live near a big apple store they will let you see the xserves in the back generally, just ask.

Here are Xserve benchmarks, while they are on apples site they were done by Xinet independently, the layout of information is just nicer on apple's site, you can read them at xinet if you want though For complete details of the benchmarks, see Xinet's website www.xinet.com

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

Here's what people are saying about it, there was a review in the wallstreet journal as well, i can't find the link, can somebody who has it post it?

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

Clear Channel Worldwide
"We saw Xserve and were blown away. We are adding 40 new servers before the end of the year, and Xserve is perfect for our outdoor creative and media production needs," said Joe Shannon, Clear Channel Worldwide's vice president and CTO. "As the global leader in outdoor advertising, radio broadcasting and live entertainment, Clear Channel will be using Xserve to satisfy our demanding network requirements."

Oracle
Apple's powerful new Xserve rack-mount workgroup server solution combined with Apple's UNIX-based Mac OS X Server software is a superior platform for Oracle9i" said Mike Rocha, senior vice president, Product Services and Platform Technologies, Oracle Corp. "Oracle's leading database clustering technology, Oracle 9i Real Application Clusters, running on Xserve will deliver enterprise class solutions to our joint customers and create new opportunities for both companies."

HP
"We are delighted to continue our tradition of working with Apple by extending HP OpenView management software to the Mac," said Peter van der Fluit, vice president of Sales and Marketing, HP Software. "As the leader in services-driven management solutions, HP fully supports a multi-platform strategy, which complements Apple's embrace of industry standards and enables Apple's Xserve to be seamlessly managed within the HP OpenView environment. Working with Apple we will bring more of our services-driven management solutions to the Mac to provide our mutual customers with reliable solutions that scale to their needs."

I wish my business was bigger so I could justify the leap. :D Whether local or remote, I would love to have an Xserve to play with.

:) Bailey