XServes

Lom is one issue. But I think you can buy an another nic to sort that.

Regards,

Ben Toms

How does buying another nic help the no LOM issue? The other problem you'll come across is the lack of a second power supply.

Sent from my iPad

I thought you can buy nics that support lom.

Maybe I'm wrong?

Regards,

Ben Toms

To all,

The biggest and main problem with the mac pro's are there are no built in
redundancies like the xserves have. They include: LOM, power supply, fans,
etc. As well, you may run out of card slots if you need things like a
second NIC card, fibre cards, etc. Then there is the power consumption and
heat factors. Plus, you should be using raid for the system drives, so
there is the raid card. Finally, there is the connection to whatever you
are using for your mass storage (the fibre card will probably work unless
you are using something different with preprietory hardware.

All in all, the blade is better.... maybe a mini with a will work as well
(with a big external hard disk); it has a smaller footprint (I use two of
them as servers - one for JAMF!).

Best,

Roy

Also, hot swapping of drives is a big win on the Xserve. Also, should
something on the Xserve go TANGO UNIFORM, the parts are very easy to swap
out. A main logic board replacement on a Mac Pro is much more time
consuming than one on an Xserve.

One thing we really like about the Xserve is having the SSD as the boot
device (and as such it's super fast as most of the time, it's doing read
operations). This gives us the ability to RAID 5 the 3 chassis drives
together. It solved the problem of losing a drive when they went to the
G5-type enclosure.

j
-- Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Client Services
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

Cool, thanks for all your replies, luckily so far I am not seeing anything that we currently make use of, we dont use LOM or extra power supplies etc, but thanks :-)

Regards

Criss

Criss Myers
Senior IT Analyst (Mac Services)
iPhone / iPad Developer
Apple Certified Technical Coordinator v10.5
LIS Development
Software Management Team
Adelphi Building AB28
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Ex 5050
01772 895050

One Interesting option I saw on AFP548 is using 2 MacMinis in a RAIS setup.
From http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=postxserve

"Behold the RAIS
That's right, the Redundant Array of Inexpensive Servers. This is a fun thing that we've talked about for a while now. I grabbed two new Mini servers and gave it a try the other day. I thought it would make a big article, but really it's so easy that it's more of a tip.

Take one Mac mini server configure as you like and enable it's boot drive as a RAID member.
Boot the other Mac mini server into Target Disk Mode.
Connect them with a FW-800 cable.
Add the TDM mini to the mirror that the boot drive is in.

And that's it.

If you want to be fancy you can add in some smart power like this thing and have it reboot the standby Mac automatically.

If you don't want two minis you could do this with Mac Pro units. Or you could have a parasitic mini hanging off of a Mac Pro as a backup plan."

Sounds interesting to me!

Justin

-- Justin Hall Bsc, CCNA, CNA, MACS, ACHDS
ICT Manager
Helena College

P: 9298 9100 Ext. 110
F: 9298 8616

Please consider the environment before printing this email

So if you use Mac Mini's to make a RAIS, you basically have a $500+
external drive? Sorry, I don't see this as a good idea...

--
Karl Schoenefeld | IT Department
SGS St Louis | 1035 Hanley Industrial Court | St Louis, MO 63144
Direct: 314-918-3126 | Cell: 314-680-0359

I agree, I don't really see the point as it is trivial to boot from a clone on almost any apple device. I'd prefer Apple allow us to install on other enterprise worthy hardware such as IBM, Dell, or others. VMWare would be nice, but many times you want a physical box if you are going to do any heavy IO or processing, let alone large file systems that need to be backed up.

I for one am not crossing my fingers. I'll probably start looking into ways of replacing a lot of our OS X Server functions with RHEL.

Sent from my iPad

I agree that Apple should develop an alliance with a 3rd party hardware company (like they did with the Promise raid arrays after dumping the xRaid product) to allow running the Apple Server OS on a 3rd party blade. It is the logical "Enterprise" thing to do.

Roy

I would agree. I was hoping this was in the works with Sun or someone...

I'd agree with the sentiments here. I think the best idea would be to
partner with VMWare. They have the highest enterprise deployment rate.
Second place is Hyper-V, and we all know that isn't going happen. ;-)

Partner with VMWare, Apple will include something in the OS that says it'll
only work with VMWare and VMWare will check for that on their side and
present some key to the OS to check against, and Apple still only needs to
write one set of drivers, and VMWare optimizes their current VMWare Tools to
run on Apple.

Problem solved... You can run it cheap by running free VMWare ESXi
Hypervisor, or go all out with full VSphere. The datacenter people are
happy, mac server people are happy, Apple is happy, VMWare is happy, blade
server manufacturers are happy, storage manufacturers are happy... About
the only unhappy people would probably be Promise because I don't see a lot
of people choosing them over the EMC's, HP's, Compellent's, and EqualLogic's
of the world when Apple can't tell you that you have to use Promise (even
though you can use others, we did)...

John

-- John Wetter
Technical Services Manager
Educational Technology, Media & Information Services
Hopkins Public Schools