Peeve Farm

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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.

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Tuesday, May 14, 2002

10:55 - "They did it right, right down to cable management."
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0205/14.server.php

(top)

That's what the VP of IT for Genentech said about the XServe, mentioning on-stage that his company is going to be using it for BLAST clustering.

Ooh, and here's a neat little selling point:

[Customers] want problems solved, not a lot of finger-pointing. Hardware company refers you to software company, software company refers you to hardware company. Apple is fundamentally different, because we're designing the entire solution, hardware and software.

Very astute. How many IT guys have spent time on the phone with Dell tech support hearing about how such-and-such problem is the fault of Windows, and then calling up Microsoft's tech support only to be told that the problem is with Dell's hardware? Seems Apple is dedicating a highly trained server support team to the XServe, which is a really saleable application of the "whole widget" philosophy. This should please people.

Apple does admit that they're new to some aspects of server support:

They wanted speed. Really, really fast. In fact, the group that didn't want to touch anything wanted four-hour on-site support. We don't do this today. We've majored in learning how to do this in the past several months. And today, we're ready to do this. And for users who want to do this, we're providing them with a spare parts kit, so they can change stuff out themselves.

...But they're going to give it a shot.

Oh, and One More Thing�: a separate rackable storage unit called XServe RAID.

3U height
14 drive bays
14 120GB ATA drives - in same hot-plug format as Xserve
1.68TB
Dual 2GB Fibre Channel on system
400MB/second storage throughput

RAID is all about data protection -- all critical components are redundant. Dual RAID controllers -- drives, power, cooling -- all redundant. 14 independent hard drives, and each RAID controller connects to seven of them. Each has an independent ATA controller that goes to the heart of the system. 128MB processor cache in the RAID processor. Redundant drive cache, redundant fans. Will be Available by the end of calendar year 2002.

Holy crumbs, is all I've got to say. The boys across the street have been busy... and they're aiming high.

If this takes off, I would imagine that in a few months' time, Apple will be a name that gets respect no matter who in what professional capacity you mention it to, a name that nobody scoffs at. It'd be like mentioning BMW. (With attendant snobbish connotations, I'm sure-- but I'll live with that, if it means nobody disses the actual technology.)

Let the good times roll...