April 07, 2009, 10:25 AM — Apple on Tuesday updated its 1U rackmount server, Xserve. The new sever is based on Intel's latest Nehalem Xeon Processors, giving the Xserve twice the performance of its predecessor, according to Apple.
The standard configuration Xserve (US$2,999) comes with a single 2.26GHz Quad Core Xeon processor and 8MB of fully shared L3 cache. The new Xserve also has an integrated memory controller with three channels of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC memory, which Apple says delivers 2.4 times the memory bandwidth of previous models.
For the first time, Apple has included a solid state drive in the Xserve. The 128GB SSD boot drive option is faster than regular hard disks and it doesn't take up one of the three available drive bays. The drive bays support 7200 rpm SATA and 15,000 rpm SAS drives and can be configured with up to 3TB of internal storage.
To further protect your data, Apple also includes a A 72-hour backup battery with the latest Xserve.
Other features of the newest line of Xserve include a single 160GB 7200 rpm SATA Apple Drive Module; dual Gigabit Ethernet on-board; two PCI Express 2.0 x16 expansion slots; Bonjour-enabled Lights-Out Management processor and Server Monitor Software; internal graphics with Mini DisplayPort output; two FireWire 800 and three USB 2.0 ports; and an unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard.
Build-to-order upgrades allow you to upgrade several components to add a dual 2.26GHz, 2.66GHz or 2.93GHz Intel Xeon processors 160GB and 1TB 7200 rpm SATA Apple Drive Modules; 450GB 15,000 rpm SAS drives; internal Xserve RAID card; Gigabit Ethernet, 4Gb Fibre Channel cards; and a 750W redundant power supply.
