Hands on: Apple's new Xserve -- now with dual-core Xeon goodness

Computerworld - I recently got a walk-through from Apple officials of the company's new Intel-based Xserve, and then -- again, courtesy of Apple -- I got to actually take one for a test-drive. I can say from the start that this stylish piece of hardware represents a significant improvement over its predecessor, which itself offered amazing value and high-powered performance. Apple went to great pains to deliver design and performance improvements that are evident on first look and use and will be welcomed by data center managers.

The Xeon-based Xserve unleashed (Click image to see larger view)

Overview

The new Xserve base model sports two 64-bit dual-core Xeon "Woodcrest" processors running at 2 GHz; 1GB of 667-MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM RAM; a single 80GB 3Gbit/sec. Serial ATA (SATA) Apple Drive Module; onboard dual Ethernet; a Combo drive; single power supply; no expansion cards; a built-in ATI Radeon X1300 PCI Express graphics card with 64MB of GDDR3 synchronous dynamic RAM; and Mac OS X Server unlimited client software. Base Price: $2,999. That's quite a punch at such a low price.

The OS X server software included is a 100% native, 64-bit unified operating system with many of the included applications -- like MySQL and Java Application server -- also bumped up to take advantage of the 64-bit processors. As in previous versions, the Xserve motherboard is held in place by captive thumbscrews that require no special tools to open.

The model I tested is a bit more robust than the standard configuration, and I had it optimized for streaming media. This particular model has two dual-core Xeon processors running at 3.0 GHz; 8GB of RAM (4x2GB 667-MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMMs); a single 73GB, 15,000-rpm Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drive, plus two 750GB 7,200-rpm SATA drives; the built-in Radeon X1300 graphics card; dual power supplies; a dual-layer SuperDrive; a 2Gbit/sec. dual-channel Fibre Channel card; a dual-port Gigabit Ethernet card; and the Mac OS X Server unlimited client.

Pricing is still a bit lower than what you would expect for such a loaded machine, but it's not cheap: As equipped, the Xserve would cost $9,971.

Remember, Leopard server is expected to be out in early 2007, so when buying a new Xserve be sure to get the operating system maintenance plan to guarantee you'll get the new server operating system at no additional charge when it emerges from its lair. The plan costs $999 for 36 months

Now that we've covered the basic configuration, cost and my first impressions, let's take a deeper look inside.

Processors and fans

Removing the two captive thumbscrews that hold the cover on, and then taking out the five Phillips screws to expose the fan assembly yields this view of the Xserve's internal hardware.