To Xserve or not to Xserve, that is the Question.

[mysteron]

Hi.

I work at a company where we have been evaluating several enterprise solutions such as a the Xserve, RedHat Enterprise and Sun based Solaris solutions. Now the time has come to decide which way to go, to Apple or someplace else.

I've really found the administration interface of the Xserve we bought for evaluation purposes simple and easy to use. However, upon reading that Steve Jobs have upon time and time stated that Apple is not an enterprise oriented business solutions provider, questionsmarks appear not just because of the above statement. Are Apple Xserve solutions a safe path to choose for the next couple of years, or will the enterprise solutions be shut down silently? Have anyone heard of when we should see Intel based Xserve solutions? If possible, I'd also like feedback on how well you have been able to offer new services when you chose Apple based solutions.

Questions are aplenty, and neither Apple sales have been able to answer my questions, hence that is why I'm turning to the community for help and advice. I hope with your help I can tell our tech-boss something reassuring about Apple solutions when have our meeting regarding which path to choose, Apple, RedHat or Sun.


Ty,
/Mysteron

 

[Eidorian]

I'd have to say that they're a safe path. There NEEDS to be a rackable machine to run OS X server side programs. You're not going to see lots of upgrades and they're not cheap though.

Sadly, I haven't heard anything about Intel based XServes yet. I doubt we'll see them for awhile too. We just sucked it up and bought a Software Update/FileMaker XServe. I love it to death and the Mac guys got to name it too.

Sadly, they're not really cost effective and we only have one XServe. Most of our other rack space is taken up by Sun and Dell.

 

[mysteron]

Thx for your answer. We have the same situation here, most of our rackspace is based upon servers and blades running RedHat / Debian solutions. However, these are not as userfriendly as Apple, and with a growing need for easier management I've been trying to sell the Apple idea to our tech-boss

 

[Eidorian]

Thx for your answer. We have the same situation here, most of our rackspace is based upon servers and blades running RedHat / Debian solutions. However, these are not as userfriendly as Apple, and with a growing need for easier management I've been trying to sell the Apple idea to our tech-boss

Yeah, OS X 10.4 Server is a big leap from 10.3. My coworker's current G5 was the test machine for 10.3 but they never got around to testing OS X Server until I was hired. We got a spare Quicksilver and tested it on that. We really like the network imaging for our Macs and it integrates perfectly with our LDAP server.

We've been wanting a FileMaker server so it was natural to form a proposal and we ordered the Dual 2.3 GHz XServe. I'm just a technical assistant but I really take the load off of the other guys so we can do projects now.

 

[mysteron]

Yeah, OS X 10.4 Server is a big leap from 10.3. My coworker's current G5 was the test machine for 10.3 but they never got around to testing OS X Server until I was hired. We got a spare Quicksilver and tested it on that. We really like the network imaging for our Macs and it integrates perfectly with our LDAP server.

We've been wanting a FileMaker server so it was natural to form a proposal and we ordered the Dual 2.3 GHz XServe. I'm just a technical assistant but I really take the load off of the other guys so we can do projects now.

LDAP is one of the major changes we will have to implement now when we buy new solutions. It has been a pain and still is to administrate servers based on passwd & shadow. You have the Xserve as a slave LDAP i presume? May I ask if you had any troubles integrating it with the LDAP service you have (OpenLDAP)?

 

[superbovine]

if you are running mysql in any large scale you need to read this document before spending your money.

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436&p=6

 

[CanadaRAM]

if you are running mysql in any large scale you need to read this document before spending your money.

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436&p=6

What my fellow ruminant said ^^

Fundamentally, without a ground up re-write, OSX will not be a high-volume server OS. It is best reserved for specific purposes and tiny enterprises where administration costs weigh more than poor multiuser performance -- not for building a medium or large multiuser system around.

That said, I run our inventory and invoicing multiuser Filemaker database very successfully from a Mini (300 days uptime). It's a matter of scale. If I had 50 users, I would be buying a dual Xeon with RAID.