Apple on Tuesday announced an updated Xserve that delivers up to twice the performance of its previous-generation server.
The combination of Intel’s Nehalem Xeon processors and a new system architecture deliver up to an 89 percent performance-per-watt improvement. Xserve is available with one or two Intel Xeon processors, a low-power solid-state drive (SSD) and up to 3TB of internal storage. The Xserve includes an unlimited client license and sells for $2,999.
“The Xserve is the best work group server for our education, business and creative customers,” said David Moody, Apple’s vice president of worldwide Mac product marketing. “With up to twice the performance, better power efficiency, and an innovative SSD drive option, this is the best Xserve we’ve ever made.”
Specing Out the New Xserve
The Xserve’s Intel Xeon processors run at speeds up to 2.93 GHz. Each processor offers an integrated memory controller with three channels of 1066-MHz DDR3 ECC memory that Apple said delivers up to 2.4 times the memory bandwidth while cutting memory latency up to 40 percent. Using high-efficiency power supplies and intelligent thermal management, Apple said Xserve delivers a 19 percent reduction in idle power use.
Xserve offers a 128GB SSD boot-drive option that demands only a fraction of the power of a hard disk and delivers up to 48 times faster random-access times without occupying a drive bay, according to Apple. Xserve’s three 3.5-inch drive bays support both 7200 rpm SATA and 15,000 rpm SAS drives and can be configured with up to 3TB of internal storage.
Two PCI Express 2.0 x16 expansion slots provide massive I/O bandwidth to support the latest high-bandwidth expansion cards. Apple said the Xserve RAID card option now delivers improved performance up to 497MB/s and supports RAID levels 0, 1 and 5 with 512MB of cache without using a PCI Express expansion slot….