Posted on 02/04/2004 1:08:41 AM PST by Swordmaker
Two words come immediately to mind to describe Apple's Xserve G5: power and choice. The Xserve G5 is a rack-mounted server product designed to work with Mac OS X Server to create a powerful and highly configurable server. And like the original Xserve, the new Xserve G5 continues to illustrate Apple's commitment to a high-performance server platform -- something that until recently was lacking in Apple's product scheme.
The Xserve G5 isn't a product that most mainstream Mac users will find interesting (except for perhaps diehard Mac fans). But it is a product that should appeal to system and network administrators who support and work with Mac clients on a daily basis, because of its power, convenience, interoperability with other platforms and the configuration options it offers.
Like the original Xserve and most rack-mounted servers, the Xserve G5 is designed to run in a server room, allowing average users to take for granted that their network access, server-based applications, e-mail, Web sites and the like will all be there when they need them.
Focusing solely on the hardware, the new Xserve just wows me. It has one or two 2-GHz G5 processors, uses 400-MHz ECC RAM and has a dedicated front-side bus running at 1 GHz (the dual-processor model has two independent front-side buses, one for each processor). Add to that the ability to support up to 8GB of RAM, and you have the makings of the fastest Mac ever conceived. But Apple didn't stop there. Each of the three drive modules contains dedicated 150MB/sec. controllers, and the Xserve supports 100- and 133-MHz PCI-X cards. Rounding out its impressive technology pedigree are two onboard Gigabit Ethernet ports, each with its own dedicated controller.
What does all that power mean? A machine that is up to 60% faster than the original Xserve, which was a powerhouse in its own right. Compared with similar server platforms, the Xserve G5 offers more sheer computational power for straight high-end computing tasks.
In terms of file services, it outpaces one of the fastest Windows file servers -- the IBM eServer x335 running Windows Server 2003 -- by about 20% in high-volume NetBench testing. (This is with both machines providing Server Message Block file services for Windows.) Interestingly enough, the performance difference grows as more clients are connected. With fewer than 12 clients, the IBM eServer provides better network throughput than the Xserve.
But sheer power isn't what impresses me most. That accolade goes to its ease of configuration, monitoring and maintenance. A stock Xserve out of the box is impressive, but it ships with only a single 80GB drive. Adding drives to the Xserve is impressively easy. Simply pop out one of the three hot plug drive modules, put a new drive in it (up to 250GB at present), pop the module back in, and you're ready to go. No powering down the server, no messy opening it up, just pop out and pop back in, with no downtime whatsoever.
Other hardware options include a CD-ROM or combo drive for installing software directly or providing optical backups (although given the situations in which one would use an Xserve, burning data to a CD or CD-RW doesn't strike me as a logical choice for backup or archiving). The option for a Fibre Channel PCI card makes connecting multiple Xserves for clustering -- or to create high performance connections between servers -- not only possible but also easy. It also facilitates connection of an Xserve RAID, which I'll profile in a later column. The two PCI slots also enable the connection of other hardware, including additional network ports. And the two FireWire 800 ports enable the connection of additional high-speed devices for such purposes as backup and archiving.
Monitoring an Xserve can be done by using either the status LED on the Xserve itself or by remotely using the Server Monitor application for Mac OS X Server. Server Monitor places indicators equivalent to the server LEDs on your desktop, just a click away from additional information on each piece of the Xserve's hardware: RAM, drives, power supply, network ports, internal temperature, fans and physical security. A plethora of alert thresholds can also be set, notifying you of any problems with the Xserve with pop-up warnings, e-mails, faxes or pages.
Maintenance of the Xserve is also a great feature. As with the Power Mac line, Apple has made access to every internal component of the Xserve quick and painless. Even better, Apple sells Xserve maintenance kits as part of its service plans for the Xserve. These kits contain replacements for the critical proprietary hardware inside an Xserve. This is a crucial selling point of the product that is easily overlooked and a variation from Apple's typical hardware support. The ability to simply pop in a new power supply or fan yourself rather than going through an Apple service provider saves hours of downtime and quite a bit of potential aggravation.
Finally, one of the most overlooked features of the Xserve G5 that I want to mention is the onboard Ethernet controllers. One of the problems I've seen discussed by Mac administrators is integrating of an OS X Server with clients using multiple VLANs. VLANs serve many purposes, chief among them managing network traffic effectively. However, it can be tricky getting directory services and NetBoot to function properly across VLANs, and it sometimes may not work at all if a Mac OS X Server machine is on a separate VLAN from the clients. The onboard Ethernet ports of the support VLAN tags fully, allowing an Xserve to be a member of multiple VLANs. That at least mitigates problems, if it doesn't resolve them completely.
All in all, the Xserve G5 is not something most Mac users will focus on. But for Mac administrators, especially those in companies and institutions with a high demand for fast, reliable network services, the Xserve G5 seems like a dream machine.
Ryan Faas has been an IT professional and technology writer specializing in Macintosh for nearly 10 years, and currently manages the Mac OS X Server and Macintosh workstations for a community college in upstate New York.
Interesting... I wonder why its faster with more clients connected?
And don't forget price. An XServe similar to a 1U Dell with equivalent $ in hard drives and 3 year on site service costs about $1,000 more than the Dell. However, you still need an OS on the Dell, which could cost you anywhere from $800 for basic Red Hat to $3,300 for Windows with only a 25 client license (Mac is unlimited).
Depending on your configuration the Mac is a lot cheaper, especially if you're thinking of doing a cluster where the price drops to $3,000.
Since Apple does speed bumps less frequently than the PC world, they got passed up. Dual 2.6GHz (1.3GHz FSB) machines are expected soon with 3 GHz / 1.5 GHz FSB this summer. Plus the newer IBM compilers are ready to give a big speed boost for the PPC970 architecture, which is quite alien to the gcc compiler so far used.
Expect to see the benchmarks and claims again if the PC world doesn't get a 50%+ speed boost by then.
Well, that. And the fact that it wasn't true to begin with ;)
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and benchmarks (Benjamin Disraeli in grave @ 4500rpm).
It's not hard to make a benchmark for approximately equivalent computers (Dual 2 GHz G5 / Dual 3 GHz Xeon) come out far ahead for one. Apple did some questionable stuff in those benchmarks, but they shouldn't have to when the 3 GHz with the IBM compiler is out. Looking at the Intel and AMD roadmaps, I don't think there will be a PC system at that time that can compete.
They really didn't have to at the beginning, either - clock-for-clock, the G5 looks to be about as fast as the P4, which means that the only reason that the P4 is faster for the moment is the higher clock speed. If they can bump up the clock rates, it should be quite competitive. Be interesting to see what it looks like against the Opteron/Athlon 64, anyway...
I'd say 50% faster per clock for dual systems. IBM's PPC970 is really an awesome processor.
Be interesting to see what it looks like against the Opteron/Athlon 64
Neck and neck on the real world tests I've seen, each one ahead a touch in some areas. I'm not sure about video performance, because in the test I saw the Opteron was fitted with a much faster card so it obviously came out faster there.
We'll see when there are better compilers, but for now I have yet to see a non-Apple bench to support that. As for Athlon 64, the last bench I saw was last month's Macworld, which basically had a dual G5 running somewhat behind - or somewhat ahead, depending on the task - a single processor Athlon box....
Not that it really matters - the G5 is a credible player by any account, and if it makes Apple buyers happy, who am I to complain?
IBM's xlf (FORTRAN) and xlc (C) compilers for the PPC970/G5 are already out and available for free download. They are already showing good improvement on integer performance and massive speed increases for floating point. It's just a matter of recompiles for the developers, which is not always a trivial thing, but worth the speed boost
The one I saw had dual 2GHz G5s and Opterons running neck and neck on everything except for video where the Opteron was fitted with a faster card. Of course, the G5 as purchased was $700 cheaper.
In the end the consumers win no matter what platform.
We'll see how things go with the new compilers and higher clock speeds, though. What would really be nice is if Apple/Moto/IBM/someone would break down and submit official SPEC results - the last time Moto submitted official results to SPEC was with the 604, in 1997, and nothing since then. I tend to think that's not an accident, but now it would be very useful to see them do it again with the G5, since it's got a legitimate shot at doing well...
Not a chance since Moto doesn't make it -- it's derived from IBM's POWER4 server processor. :)
But I'd expect it would show in SPEC 2004.
The PowerPC history is a pretty tangled one between Apple, IBM and Motorola, but that isn't quite right. The Gx moniker is an Apple advertising schema, while there is no actual "G" made by either Motorola or IBM. Motorola made the last two generations, the PPC (MPC in Moto talk) 750 (G3) and 7400 (G4) series of which variants went into Macs while IBM worked on other PowerPC variants and their original POWER server line. IBM took that extremely distant cousin from a line split over 10 years prior, the POWER4, and turned it into a desktop chip, calling it the PPC 970, which goes into Apples as the G5 along with Moto's SIMD unit.
Meanwhile, Moto kept working on their lines for embedded products, coming up with the MPC 8000 series, which you're probably thinking of as the G5. But it is a very different processor than the PPC 970.
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