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Xserve VS Mac Pro
- Thread starter Pika
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The Xserve is loud and hot. You'd most likely regret buying it if you had to work in the same room as it. Plus the graphics capabilities of the Xserve are rubbish in comparison to the Mac Pro.
The server goes into a rack, typically in a computer room. It is louder than the Mac Pro. It is not suitable for use on a desktop or in a cubicle environment.
The Mac Pro is a high end workstation. It is quiet, in a tower case, and is great for use in a desktop or cubicle.
I was about to post a similar thread.. but more about the memory configurations of the two. Umm... the Xserver seems to have better triple channel configs compared to the MacPro, what sup with that? am i missing something?
data centres charge for the co-location measured in 1U,2U,3u and 4U. Having a Xserve would be cheaper cause it take up less rack space. Though there's nothing stopping you from sending in your MacPro (assuming your made of money).
Think of the noise from a 40mm fan and multiply it by a facter of ten or twelve, as the majority of the noise will come from the coolers...
Yeah i was thinking that, too but to be completely honest.. I don't think i need to upgrade yet. My MP Octo 3.2 is more than enough, Keeping it at 100% load is almost impossible. lol
Ain't really about the amount but the optimization.. (atleast that's what i'm looking at)
Don't think my wallet has funds for 32Gb.. does yours?
No... But it might be usefull for thw future.
64GB of RAM limit is huge.
where does it say 64GB limit?
http://www.apple.com/uk/xserve/specs.html
Yeah, I noticed that the Xserve has 6 or 12 RAM slots compared to the 4/8 in the Pro. It still boggles my mind that there aren't 6 slots in the quad Pro, there's certainly the room available.
I'd really like a horizontal desktop configuration of the Pro. Something between the size of the current Pro and the styling of the Xserve.
I don't think that the volume of noise is the worst part but more the continuous high pitched buzzing from the fans. It gets irritating after a while.
Yeah, they're NOT as loud as people are saying in this thread. We had 12 of them in the server room at the University I worked at. Turn your Mac Pro fans up to 2,000 RPM and then imagine the pitch to be a little higher and you'll have a good idea of what 1 will sound like.
They are a server blade (obviously) and I guess they're good as a server blade for things blade racks are good for. And this very often (these days) might entail 32GB of RAM or more. Certainly the faster RAM access is desirable in a server component!
The graphics accelerator is a NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 so it's not bad like people are saying either. Also I suppose you can upgrade it yourself just like people are doing with their Mac Pro's here.
I almost purchased a an Apple blade instead of the Mac Pro but didn't because of the higher cost and fewer buss-slots.
They are a server blade (obviously) and I guess they're good as a server blade for things blade racks are good for. And this very often (these days) might entail 32GB of RAM or more. Certainly the faster RAM access is desirable in a server component!
The graphics accelerator is a NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 so it's not bad like people are saying either. Also I suppose you can upgrade it yourself just like people are doing with their Mac Pro's here.
I almost purchased a an Apple blade instead of the Mac Pro but didn't because of the higher cost and fewer buss-slots.
Say I got a 25u cabinet... would it help to suppress the noise of the xserve? I'm thinking of purchasing 2 to help me out with rendering red/3d footage.
There are special cases made to surpress sound but they cost thousands of dollars. If you have a different room, then you could probably put the server in the separate room.
Servers are not intended (by default) to be plugged into displays - or to play games. Graphics cards are OPTIONAL. It is for doing the heavy lifting on web sites, video, etc. One desktop can manage an entire array of servers.
They are not intended to be machines that you use as a desktop computer.
They are not intended to be machines that you use as a desktop computer.
Yes. Rack housing comes in many different form factors from mini 4u enclosures for a few hundred dollars on up - and most (all?) of them cut the noise and increase the efficiency of the air flow or other cooling dynamics. It's also easy to build your own from scratch.
And a blade is a computer. YOU decide what it will be used for - which of course includes "plugged into displays - and to play games". No problem!
The main feature of a blade is NOT heavy lifting or particular mission computing... It's total system expandability and configurability. Where "the system" is considered to be the rack(s) and not the individual blades so much. Think of it as a much larger scale erector set.
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I kind like to think of the difference of Xserve and Mac Pro as a difference of their respective end users.
Xserve in my mind is more for web server farms and/or large/medium company servers.
Mac Pro is more used more by people in the photography, film industry doing heavy rendering and in small business as a server.
I realize these usages may be common sense, but how else to compare both the Mac Pro and Xserve in these kind of threads? So now, answer the following: What are your usages? Do you really need the extra RAM slots? Are you in need of better graphic capabilities of the Mac Pro?
Answer these to yourself and then I think you can choose more wisely between which machine you need.
Xserve in my mind is more for web server farms and/or large/medium company servers.
Mac Pro is more used more by people in the photography, film industry doing heavy rendering and in small business as a server.
I realize these usages may be common sense, but how else to compare both the Mac Pro and Xserve in these kind of threads? So now, answer the following: What are your usages? Do you really need the extra RAM slots? Are you in need of better graphic capabilities of the Mac Pro?
Answer these to yourself and then I think you can choose more wisely between which machine you need.
Simulating multi-user high network activity: XServe or Mac Pro?
I build performance tests for client-server software, which means I've got a server running and a script which starts, say, 100 copies of some other script which is ultimately sending data through TCP/IP to the server. Data is generated into creatively named directories like /test/1/99/l_sunset.bmp
We're multiplatorm,; one particular script of mine ran in 11-12 minutes,
on a big, beefy, Linux server. It took 14 minutes for a very lightwieght Mac server- 4G memorty, 4 cores, really a platform for testing our Mac software.
Cutting the data down from around 22Mb to 5-6, ie by 3/4, allowed me to get the script to allllmoooosssssttttt run- some TCP/IP timeouts, in 125 minute on an iMac.
Is it practical to run OS X Server on my Mac Pro, 16G memory, 4 discs, without an external compuer to hook to it?
In other words, running X Server with the Cinema LED display, stock mouse and keyboard? Or is that a kludge at best?
I can't find a clear statement that OS X Serer will or will not run on a newish (2009) mac *using* the mac's built in display, keyboard and mouse.
Thanks!
Bill
I build performance tests for client-server software, which means I've got a server running and a script which starts, say, 100 copies of some other script which is ultimately sending data through TCP/IP to the server. Data is generated into creatively named directories like /test/1/99/l_sunset.bmp
We're multiplatorm,; one particular script of mine ran in 11-12 minutes,
on a big, beefy, Linux server. It took 14 minutes for a very lightwieght Mac server- 4G memorty, 4 cores, really a platform for testing our Mac software.
Cutting the data down from around 22Mb to 5-6, ie by 3/4, allowed me to get the script to allllmoooosssssttttt run- some TCP/IP timeouts, in 125 minute on an iMac.
Is it practical to run OS X Server on my Mac Pro, 16G memory, 4 discs, without an external compuer to hook to it?
In other words, running X Server with the Cinema LED display, stock mouse and keyboard? Or is that a kludge at best?
I can't find a clear statement that OS X Serer will or will not run on a newish (2009) mac *using* the mac's built in display, keyboard and mouse.
Thanks!
Bill