* Apple’s Xserve G5 server debuts
Apple last week upgraded its server line with the addition of an Xserve G5 server with a faster processor and more storage capacity.
The original Xserve was first introduced in 2002, a 1U high server that ran at 1 GHz. The new Xserve G5 uses the PowerPC processor running at 2.3 GHz. Like the original Xserve, it has dual processors.
The Xserve G5 is a 64-bit machine with 9.2G bit/sec of bandwidth per processor. It hosts as many as three 7,200-RPM 400G-byte Serial ATA drives and is designed for file and print serving or high-performance computational clusters.
The 2.3-GHz Xserve was previously only provided to Virginia Tech for use in its supercomputer cluster. There, 1,100 Xserve servers are deployed.
The Xserve now comes with as much as 8G bytes of memory and two 133-MHz PCI-X slots for connecting to external storage or for hosting InfiniBand, Fibre Channel or other network cards.
It ships with an unlimited client version of Mac OS X Server 10.3. OS X 10.3 incorporates Panther open source software with management tools.
The Xserve G5 is available now in three configurations: a single-processor 2.0-GHz machine with 1G byte of RAM and 80G bytes of storage for $3,000; a dual-processor 2.3-GHz model with 1G byte of RAM and 80G bytes of storage for $4,000; and a 2.3-GHz dual-processor server that is optimized for clusters for $3,000.
Further, the company announced the availability of its Xsan SAN file system, which lets customers consolidate their storage resources into a single shared file system. The Xsan file system can scale to as much as 16 terabytes per individual volume and is designed to handle post-production, data center, broadcast and high-performance computing workloads. Xsan is a 64-bit clustered file system for Mac OS X. Because it is interoperable with ADIC’s StorNext File System, it can be used in Windows, Unix and Linux environments. Xsan is available now for $999.
