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Apple Upgrades Xserve G5 - The Xserve G5 offers dense power in a 1U server with dual 64-bit G5 processors at speeds of up to 2.3GHz. An award-winning UNIX-based server operating system with unlimited clients, up to 1.2TB storage, PCI-X expansion, dual Gigabit Ethernet, fast I/O ports and an optical drive let Xserve G5 serve your every need. With configurations starting at just $2,999, it is the ideal server for everything from file and print serving to computational clusters.

X marks the spot: Apple Xsan finally sees the light of day - Despite having been on the market for nearly three years at this point, the Xserve is still a niche product. Apple may have gained some traction in a few markets, but deeper penetration into the enterprise is still elusive. While things have been looking brighter for the Xserve as of late, especially with Oracle announcing Oracle 10g for Mac OS X Server and its decision to move some of its storage capacity to the Xserve RAID, Apple still has a long way to go to move their products beyond their current niches. 1U Opteron servers running Linux can be had for quite a bit less than the Xserves. Apple has its work cut out for them if they want to wrest a significant part of the low-end server market away from its competitors

Apple ships Xsan 64-bit cluster file system - Apple today got some of its less consumer-friendly New Year announcements out of the way ahead of next week's Macworld Expo keynote and its more mainstream focus.The Mac maker has not only upgraded its Xserve line of G5-class 1U servers, but finally said it has begun shipping Xsan, a 64-bit storage area network and cluster file-system add-on

Apple's Xserve serves up more speed - The system with two 2.3GHz processors will sell for $3,999, while a machine with one 2.0GHz will sell for $2,999. Both include an unlimited client version of Mac OS X Server. Apple also offers a version of Xserve for clustered computers that includes the speedier processor and a 10-user Mac OS X license for $2,999. The 2.3GHz machines also include a faster 1.15GHz system bus

Apple Ships Xsan Storage Area Network File System - January 4, 2005—Apple today announced it has begun shipping Xsan, a high performance, enterprise class Storage Area Network (SAN) file system priced at the industry’s most aggressive price point of $999 per client and per server. Xsan combines breakthrough performance with Apple’s legendary ease of use for customers who require scalable, high-speed access to centralized shared data for storage consolidation and workflow in video post production, data center, broadcast and high performance computing environments

Apple Upgrades Xserve G5 - Now equipped with dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5 processors and up to 8GB of 400 MHz DDR memory, the new Xserve packs phenomenal computational power, revolutionary I/O and storage performance along with best-in-class management tools in an optimized 1U rack-optimized enclosure. Xserve G5 supports up to three 7200 rpm 400GB Serial ATA Apple Drive modules, offering an industry leading 1.2TB of internal storage that can deliver 800GB of internal RAID 5 protected storage when combined with Apple’s PCI Hardware RAID card. Two full-length 64-bit, 133 MHz PCI-X slots provide up to 1 GBps throughput and allow easy expansion to high performance storage and networking cards, such as SCSI, Fibre Channel and third party solutions such as InfiniBand

Virginia Tech Soups Up Its Xserve G5 Supercomputer - " This new number is an increase of almost two teraflops over the original System X," said Hassan Aref, dean of Virginia Tech's College of Engineering. "We are extremely pleased with the performance, using the new Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) machines."

 Change the SMTP port on Panther Server - The mail server admin panels in Panther Server have changed from their equivalents in Jaguar Server, hiding the options to modify the port on which Postfix listens for SMTP connections. Combined with the trend of more ISPs blocking traffic on port 25, this has become a more popular problem.

Xserve: Comparing Apple to Apples - Though not as high profile as the iPod, another Apple product — Xserve RAID — has seen the company make inroads in the storage marketplace. Containing up to 14 hot-swappable drives and up to 5.6 TB of data in a rack-optimized storage enclosure, Xserve RAID combines Ultra ATA drive technology with a 2 Gb Fibre Channel interface. It is the companion product of the Apple Xserve, a server platform that is now selling over 10,000 units a quarter, according to Gartner Group

IDC: Linux server sales to hit $9.1 billion in 2008 - Sales of servers using Linux will grow faster than the overall market at least through 2008, when customers will spend $9.1 billion for machines using the open-source operating system, market researcher IDC forecast Monday

Enterprise SAN for Mac OS X Server, Part 1 - n to today's topic—storage-area network (SAN) architecture and backup for Mac OS X Server. In order to discuss SAN backup, we should first understand what drove the development of this solution, and how it is designed

TMO Reports - Oracle Implements Xserve RAID Internally; Endorses Apple [UPDATED] - Oracle today endorsed Apple's Xserve RAID as one of a handful of storage solutions supported and recommended for its Resilient Low-Cost Storage initiative (RLCS). In addition, the company announced that it had chosen Xserve RAID to expand its own storage network using RLCS.

QuickTime Streaming Server Lets Remote Users Deny Service With DESCRIBE Requests - A vulnerability was reported in Apples's QuickTime Streaming Server. A remote user can cause denial of service conditions

Xserve RAID: Technology Overview - The new Xserve RAID builds on the success of its predecessor with even more capacity, industry-standard SFP connectors, and advanced management functions. Apple has worked with leading storage infrastructure vendors to certify Xserve RAID for integration with existing Fibre Channel hardware and data management solutions. What's more, Xserve RAID is now qualified for use in Linux, Windows, NetWare, and mixed-platform environments

Apple Sees Triple-Digit Boost in Server Sales - The Gartner report judged all servers on a range of criteria; Apple's Xserve did not score in the top half of models examined. In the "go to market" category, which looks at criteria such as industry awareness and independent vendor interest, the Xserve ranked 14th. The report mentions that mainstream hardware, such as items based on commodity x86 processors such as those from Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., has an advantage here compared with the Xserve, which relies on service and parts from Apple

Xserve RAID Admin Tools 1.3.2 - This software release improves overall reliability and is recommended for all users. If you are using Xserve RAID in an Xsan environment, you must upgrade the Xserve RAID with the firmware in this release. The versions of RAID Admin and Xserve RAID firmware in this release should replace all earlier versions. Key enhancements include

Apple updates G5 firmware, Xserve RAID Admin Tools

Gartner Analyses Apple Server Offering - Gartner Dataquest’s preliminary worldwide server shipment estimates for the third quarter of 2004 reveal that the market achieved its seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit year-over-year growth. Apple continued to re-establish itself in the server market, according to the analyst. After having above-average growth in the second quarter of 2004, Apple grew shipments 119 percent year over year.

'Macsimum' charts illustrate supercomputing scenario - ° The Xserve’s performance is definitely impressive and offers great “bang for the buck.” In a recent Cocoa training class, one of the students was from a medical center that purchased an 8-node cluster because of the price-performance. Apple needs to keep touting that and to pitch turn-key supercomputers to every university and any organization that’s interested in research.

The Xserve RAID has moved beyond the Mac - In my career as an IT professional, I've always thought that the most successful products are the ones that move beyond their creators or their original design. Netscape, Flash, JavaScript, ATA, TCP/IP, IM, the iPod, and a host of others have all moved far beyond what they started out as. It's not just technologies, such as ATA, TCP/IP, etc. It's specific products. When you are looking for groupware, Outlook is the standard all get held to. It has to be able to match (foo) features in Outlook. Ease of use for an OS? The Mac OS.
Well there's another product that is growing past what most folks think it was: The Xserve RAID

Big Mac slides to No 7 - Previously, Big Mac had placed No 3 on the Top 500 list and was temporarily removed during the time it was being upgraded this Spring. Virgina Tech's supercomputer—still the world's most-powerful academic system—consists of 1,100 dual-2.3GHz Xserve rackmount servers

Cluster Resources, Inc. Brings Leading Cluster Workload Management Software to Mac OS X HPC Environments - Cluster Resources, Inc. today announced the release of Moab Cluster Suite 4.2 for Mac OS X. It is the first release of Cluster Resources' cluster management suite to support the Mac OS X platform and includes: Moab Workload Manager™, a policy-based workload management and scheduling engine; Moab Cluster Manager™, a graphical cluster administration interface, monitor, and reporting tool; and Moab Access Portal™, an end-user job submission and management portal. Moab Cluster Suite 4.2 also supports Linux and Unix-based server platforms and Mac OS X, Linux, Unix and Windows clients.

Latest Mac OS X "Tiger" Server build enables Xgrid, Kerbros web support - Apple on Wednesday evening seeded its Apple Developer Connection members with the first wide-spread seed of Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" Server. Judging from a lengthy set of developer notes, sources privy to the pre-release build have very much described the system as a 'work in progress.'

Apple releases Mac OS X, OS X Server v10.3.6 - It includes everything found in the Mac OS X update and adds improvements to Open Directory, File Services, Fibre Channel Utility, Mail Server and LDAP

Quad Processor XServe Due in Q1 2005 - The PowerPage has received word that Apple is prepping a quad-processor Xserve for announcement in the January-March 2005 time frame. We are working to confirm details but sources say that the the Quad Xserve will be powered by dual-core IBM 970 processors

System X Faster, but Falls Behind  - Nonetheless, Srinidhi Varadarajan, System X's lead architect, said he's delighted with the supercomputer's new Linpack benchmark score, which is significantly faster than the machine's original performance.

Virginia Tech beefs up Mac supercomputer - "Virginia Tech will learn of its new ranking when the list is unveiled in November of this year at SuperComputing 2004 in Pittsburgh," lead designer Srinidhi Varadarajan said in a statement. "We expect to do well."

Apple's Superfast Supercomputer - The advantage of the Apple servers, Varadarajan says, is "pretty much price performance." Virginia Tech estimates its system costs one-fifth to one-tenth as much as it would on another platform. The original system cost $5.2 million, and another $600,000 was spent upgrading it. "It's hard to beat this," says Varadarajan

Mac supercomputer speeds up - University officials announced today that the school's rebuilt System X cluster, which is powered by G5 chips designed for Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac computers, now operates at 12.25 teraflops, making it the most powerful computer running at an academic institution, although at least three faster machines operate at government institutions

Gmail served up on Xserves? - he also made reference to Google's Gmail servers being Apple Xserves. This is not the first I've heard of this, but this is the first confirmation of that rumor I've encountered. A quick spin around the Gmail site doesn't reveal any information as to what servers are in use, but as I said, there's good reason to trust Mr. Cringely

QPS Arrives for QuarkXPress 6 and Mac OS X; QuarkDispatch Server Certified to Run on Xserve G5 - "Apple is excited about the release of QPS Classic for Mac OS X and its qualification for the Xserve G5," said Ron Okamoto, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. "With QPS Classic 3, Quark has delivered a simple yet powerful desktop publishing platform that works seamlessly with Xserve G5 and further advances the fast and reliable publishing workflow for Mac OS X customers."

Apple Xserve G5, Apple Xserve RAID - Apple has upgraded its successful Xserve to the PowerPC G5 platform. Combined with Apple's elegant management software and the new Xserve RAID NAS offering, the Xserve G5 is a powerful server solution for Mac and mixed-OS environments

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