Mac v. PC?

[Dao]

I would like to point out that, as a Data Center provider. I signed up my company (few years ago) as the provider for Apple Xserve .(The silver looking 1U rackmounable server) when they were available. To my surprise, the Apple Server hardware was not as good as others especially when I noticed they just use regular Maxtor PIDE drives in their server at that time while others were all SCSI enterprise disks. The good thing about partnering with Apple was, I got employee discount. But we drop that line pretty soon.

Of course, it may have nothing to do with the quality of their desktop or notebook lines.

Is Mac look cool? Yes, I do think so. Do I need to? hum... I'd like to try one since I am also a Unix/Linux/BSD person. But at the end, I opt for PC because that is what I like. And it does what I need to do. And it did cost less at the time when I price it against a similar Apple product.

If you use Apple computer and happy about it, why not? After all, it is a nice product and it does what people need it to do.

 

[table1349]

 

[usayit]

To be fair.... You are referring up to 2004 which was replaced with the SATA equipped G5 xserve.... which was only the second generation xserve started in 2002. Apple has never been a server farm provider and the xserves are glorified rack mountable powermacs with optional dual power supplies. They were never intended to compete with SCSI equipped Servers from the larger higher end manufacturers in price nor performance. You should be familiar with the cost difference between the two technologies.... its huge.

I assure you..... they were not the only ones using ultra ATA at that level server. Furthermore, ultra ata 133 in real world use was on par with scsi ultra 160 introduced in 1999 just two years prior to the first Xserve at again... A HUGE discount. The main advantage to SCSI being the number of target/luns you can daisy chain o a single channel; 16-1 TID x 256 LUNs. This advantage could not being leveraged by a single U server with only a couple hard drive bays. So the cost of implementing SCSI was not worth it. This btw is not only related to Apple but to many single U servers; similar to the low end DElls (850 series if my memory serves) of the same time period.

The second gen xserve went to SATA for the same reasons. Lower priced alternative to SCSI in a small chassis while leveraging higher performance storage in fibre disk racks.


So in short for the non geeks.... A server of that level equipped at tjat time with nonSCSi interfaces is neither out of the norm nor a cost cutting measure.



BTW.... I still find small and medium business servers from a variety of vendors using SATA which is still ATA with more critical data raids equipped with SAS.

 

[Dao]

Yes, usayit. I do agree they were complete with the low end server. But not with the low end price. What I saw at that time was, it was truly a over price product. Once we started to market the product (mainly via buying google key words), we had some inquiries about it. But most of them do not have a clue what to do with it. Often that, they like to use it as the Web server. Running Apache, php and MySQL. I remembered there was a company choose the xServe simply because they use Apple computers in their company. So they want to use Apple as their company Web server.

But the thing is, getting a Dell or something similar with Linux or FreeBSD is a much better option as far as cost, performance and compatibility concern. However, they liked it and happy with it and that was all matter.

 

[usayit]

I remembered there was a company choose the xServe simply because they use Apple computers in their company. So they want to use Apple as their company Web server.

This is exactly what they are aimed towards

But the thing is, getting a Dell or something similar with Linux or FreeBSD is a much better option as far as cost, performance and compatibility concern. However, they liked it and happy with it and that was all matter.

You forget that cost of running a machine includes the cost of administration and maintenance. If you had a shop that was already familiar with Mac OS X with little IT support in house, then the cost of running a Linux box (for example) can easily outweigh the cost of the server. Furthermore, a company that depends on critical operations doesn't want to go with "free" or "DIY" hardware solutions NO MATTER HOW CHEAP.... they need a business entity to responsible for continued support and operations. Last time I checked, Redhat enterprise support is on par with Apple's for example. As for cost of the O/S, most apple servers come with it... if not, its $500 which is pocket change for even small business entities.

Lets put sheer cost aside.... A privately owned established business or start up has to prove to its investors that their investment is secure. This includes discussion over protection of business operations and/or intellectual property. Can you, with a straight face, approach them with a plan that includes servers you built with off the shelf parts, with no maintenance contract, no support contract, and a free O/S. Good luck with that.

I work for a relatively small and financially conservative company. The minute a machine is off maintenance contract, they move the machine out of production and into test lab/development. That's just the way it is to keep the big wigs confident of continued operations. From what I can tell, this is a very very very common practice.



Its easy to get all caught up on the techie details but there is a whole lot more than just specs and cost of hardware/software.


PS> I am not responsible for support/maintenance contracts from what I hear Microsoft is fairly expensive... you get even more into the premium cost with the big UNIX providers; think IBM. At some point in time, we had enough knowledge and staff to provide support for our own servers and reduced contracts down to same day hardware replacement only... that still wasn't cheap at all.

 

[JClishe]

This thread has jumped the shark.

 

[usayit]

All PC versus MAC threads (and Canon vs Nikon) all jump the shark upon the first post....


Do you remember where "Jumped the Shark" saying came from?

 

[Dao]

Thanks Usayit . I understand what you are saying . But one very important point is, Apple don't quite know what they were doing with Apache, php and MySQL and often ran into issue. And support cost were about the same with both side.

I think there is a common misconception that using Linux or opensource applications were free and so everything is going to be low low cost. In most cases, the total cost of ownership are lower, but not low. Running Redhat Linux server in production machine are quite common and that come with support from Redhat. And if you ask me Dell + Redhat or Apple xServe (cost was able the same for similar hardware) as a web server, I would have to choose Dell + Redhat.

I do not know if Apple still have the xServe platform now, but before we drop it, the xServer was 2 grand server (hardware + OS). At that time, Redhat was $800 - $900 with regular non-phone support. With a comparable Dell hardware, it is still cheaper. But course, the client need to maintain the support contact year after year. After all, Apache, PHP and MySQL runs better with Linux. I think

But course, things are much different nowadays. With the virtualization and cloud stuff.

BTW, those Maxtor drives kept dying in the 24x7x265 environment. LOL

Usayit, always nice to chat with you on this.

 

[usayit]

yup nice divergence...

Mainframe was generally a thin client topology....
Linux environments kinda somewhere in the middle depemding on application deployment.....
Windows environments push things back to the edge with thick clients...

Cloud comes along to push applocation and storage to remote cloud infrastructure pretty much back to a thin client topology.... and this is suppose to bleeding edge... LoL. Ok being sarcastic... a little. lol.


just rambling...

 

[JClishe]

All PC versus MAC threads (and Canon vs Nikon) all jump the shark upon the first post....


Do you remember where "Jumped the Shark" saying came from?

The Fonz

 

[Mike_E]

I thought that jumping the shark had morphed into riding the fridge.

 

[usayit]

All PC versus MAC threads (and Canon vs Nikon) all jump the shark upon the first post....


Do you remember where "Jumped the Shark" saying came from?

The Fonz

 

[Village Idiot]

Sweet. People have to resort to insults and such via PM now? It's a real shocker if you can't figure out who the sender is... :er:

 

[Dao]

Sweet. People have to resort to insults and such via PM now? It's a real shocker if you can't figure out who the sender is... :er:

You know, sometimes people just need to get something out from their body. Let it be.

 

[Village Idiot]

With the service contract we had on our Dell servers and EMC arrays, they would send techs out to provide support since the devices were on a network that didn't have internet access. Did Apple ever provide support like that for their servers?