“A couple of weeks ago, Apple invited me to its campus to get a close-up look at Apple’s Xserve Xeon. It is a marvel of physical design, so much so that I find that it implausible that Xserve Xeon and Xserve G5 could have been designed by the same company. Xserve G5 was pretty tight, but Xserve Xeon makes its predecessor, not to mention ever PC 1U rack server I’ve seen, look slapped together,” Tom Yager writes for InfoWorld.
“I was struck by perfectly Xserve Xeon was designed, and in particular by how easily it comes apart. I have high standards in this regard. I told a friend that I will only buy or recommend servers that I can install, remove, disassemble and repair with one hand, a TSA-approved butter knife and no instructions,” Yager writes.
Yager writes, “Apple’s Xserve Xeon falls apart with the slightest touch, and I like that. I don’t mean that it’s fragile. Like most of what Apple has made, Xserve Xeon is obviously ruggedized to survive a fall… Apple troubled to make connectors that friction fit very tightly, yet don’t need to be wiggled loose… The chassis was designed first, and the logic boards were designed to fit it. What a concept.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Tony W.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple shows off new Xserve with Quad 64-bit Intel Xeon processors at LinuxWorld – August 17, 2006
Bear Stearns: Apple’s new Mac Pro, Xserve pricing well below comparable Dell systems – August 09, 2006
Apple introduces Xserve with Quad 64-bit Intel Xeon Processors – August 07, 2006
” I told a friend that I will only buy or recommend servers that I can install, remove, disassemble and repair with one hand, a TSA-approved butter knife and no instructions,” Yager writes.”
In fact, Yager is also very well known for his one hand requirement in his personal life as well. You have to maintain a high set of standards.
wow, grammar problems abound…
“In fact, Yager is also very well known for his one hand requirement in his personal life as well. You have to maintain a high set of standards.”
Is this like, never use your left hand in the Middle East, or more like furry and blind?
Darkness: the latter, like a mole
“Is my obsession with operator-centered design mine alone, or do people in the real world make buying decisions based on a server’s build quality? Do you have a 1U x86 box in your rack that you could disassemble and put back together, sans diagrammatic assistance, more easily than a kid’s bike? I know that’s desirable. I just don’t know whether anyone thinks that’s worth $2,999 when a perfectly functional, but horribly built two-socket x86 rack server can be had for half that. It is typical now that the minimum unit of field replacement is the entire system. Is that just the way of things?”:
Since he is only using one hand to work on the server, can’t he use his cell with the other and call some IT professionals to get answers to these questions?
No digg. Article incomplete.
Actually, TFA has the title as, “Apple’s Xserve Xeon: Built to fall apart.”
I guess meant to lure in the IT Windows Server Geek Fanboi with a one liner, only to pull the rug out from under him.
>I was struck by perfectly Xserve Xeon was designed,>
Another college grad.
Actually it looks as though he wrote the article using Pages, then exported it as Word, then emailed it to his editor, who opened it in Word 98.
Yager is also well known for his left hand approach when typing sentences. Or does he talk like that?
My main concern of all things 1U is heat dissipation in a full rack, even with spacing. If Apple has good airflow inside, I guess it’s cool…
I’m glad it’s become cool to write positive spin for the Mac, too bad these journos can’t write.
I can’t believe how juvenile some of the respondents are to what is, without qualification, a glowing review of the engineering behind Apple’s latest Enterprise offering. Grow up, kids.
Seriously, we have one of the only Xserves (a dual G4) in this large government agency. We needed a repository offering low cost, high capacity storage, and that’s what we got. We’re storing a few terrabytes of data in a few U of rack space. We’ve had only two issues over the three years we’ve had the box: we had one hardware failure – power supply, I think – taken care of under warranty. We also hit a limit when we wanted to create a multi-terrabyte NFS sharable partition. Apple’s engineers confirmed the problem, and took care of it in the next software release. It’s been otherwise so trouble free we’re not building up any “maintenance” expertise.
The new Xserve sounds, if anything, better yet. That, kids, is the real story here.
Hey Benc Mark.
“Yager is also well known for his left hand approach when typing sentences.”
I really resemble that remark!! … as a left hander.
Equality for all.
Raymond,
I’m just wondering; which agency?
-jcr
“Since he is only using one hand to work on the server, can’t he use his cell with the other and call some IT professionals to get answers to these questions?”
Tom Yager is not only a top notch journalist who covers technology, he is also a true IT professional who knows what he writes about.
Raymond from DC is right–this is a glowing review of an awesome server. It is aimed at enterprise IT leaders and their bosses. Some IT leaders will prefer the cheap boxes at half the price so they can stay busy fixing them; their bosses, corporate beancounters, and smart IT leaders will be more willing to consider the Xserve Xeon next time they need a new server.