Perhaps one reason people are so upset with the new Mac Pro is that the existing Mac Pro comes as a design from the old Apple COMPUTER Corporation, and the new design comes from the new Apple.
Now storage is one of the areas that people seem upset about. However, Apple may have done you a favor.
In the old days people wanted Apple to supply all our needs: servers, storage, etc. Those products, Xserve and Xserver raid, are long gone. There are plenty of fine companies whose bread and butter is to supply those types of products. That is not Apple's mission.
Apple is trying to be the digital Sony. That is consumer devices. It has been that way for some time. But that doesn't mean that your needs are unmet, rather you have to look outside of the Apple company for your solutions. There are many fine companies outside of Apple where your needs can be met. And probably cheaper, better, more reliable as well.
Personally, I was looking for safe storage as everything is being stored in a digital format: music, photos, videos all. And to save that information requires some planning and backup.
The Mac file system, HFS, is rather old, and I was looking at a Mac OS based ZFS. That was wrong. There is not strong ZFS support in the Mac community. One is better looking outside of the Mac community at communities like Linux, FreeBSD, and so on. These communities have a very vibrant and thriving and actively developed storage solutions for free.
For small business or home, a fine product from HP plus an install package from one of the above mentioned communities gives one a superior storage device, which is designed solely for that purpose, with an interested community supporting it. It also allows one to design or choose what is important for their storage needs: speed? Safety? Cost?
I will probably purchase a HP micro server. Generation 7 can be purchased for under $300. It includes room for four+ discs, ecc ram, etc.. Add whatever software you want and you have a NAS or iSCSI San for cheap. Also, the low power box is accessible to all your computers. The one limitation is gigabit ethernet, but it does have a PCIe slot or two. Generation 8 Is coming out this month and has dual gigabit ethernet ports built in, ecc ram, Ivy Bridge processors and a server chipset.
Google HP microserver.
I have installed freeNAS in a virtual machine and it is definitely worth more than it costs.
I just cleaned out some old floppy disks, don't miss that storage.
The full details of the new Mac Pro we will have to see; it will probably not be as bad as people make it out to be. It changes things, probably for the better. I don't miss serial cables, floppies, etc.
Now storage is one of the areas that people seem upset about. However, Apple may have done you a favor.
In the old days people wanted Apple to supply all our needs: servers, storage, etc. Those products, Xserve and Xserver raid, are long gone. There are plenty of fine companies whose bread and butter is to supply those types of products. That is not Apple's mission.
Apple is trying to be the digital Sony. That is consumer devices. It has been that way for some time. But that doesn't mean that your needs are unmet, rather you have to look outside of the Apple company for your solutions. There are many fine companies outside of Apple where your needs can be met. And probably cheaper, better, more reliable as well.
Personally, I was looking for safe storage as everything is being stored in a digital format: music, photos, videos all. And to save that information requires some planning and backup.
The Mac file system, HFS, is rather old, and I was looking at a Mac OS based ZFS. That was wrong. There is not strong ZFS support in the Mac community. One is better looking outside of the Mac community at communities like Linux, FreeBSD, and so on. These communities have a very vibrant and thriving and actively developed storage solutions for free.
For small business or home, a fine product from HP plus an install package from one of the above mentioned communities gives one a superior storage device, which is designed solely for that purpose, with an interested community supporting it. It also allows one to design or choose what is important for their storage needs: speed? Safety? Cost?
I will probably purchase a HP micro server. Generation 7 can be purchased for under $300. It includes room for four+ discs, ecc ram, etc.. Add whatever software you want and you have a NAS or iSCSI San for cheap. Also, the low power box is accessible to all your computers. The one limitation is gigabit ethernet, but it does have a PCIe slot or two. Generation 8 Is coming out this month and has dual gigabit ethernet ports built in, ecc ram, Ivy Bridge processors and a server chipset.
Google HP microserver.
I have installed freeNAS in a virtual machine and it is definitely worth more than it costs.
I just cleaned out some old floppy disks, don't miss that storage.
The full details of the new Mac Pro we will have to see; it will probably not be as bad as people make it out to be. It changes things, probably for the better. I don't miss serial cables, floppies, etc.
