While most of the attention Friday is on the client version of Apple’s latest release of its Mac OS X operating system, Tiger Server is a major event in itself. It bridges the worlds of open source, Unix and Windows, and may be the key to finally gaining Apple a foothold in the corporate data center.
Tiger Server Roars, Too
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The 10.3 L2TP/IPsec server didn’t interoperate with Windows XP over NAT-T. That made it a bit difficult to integrate it into a Windows shop.
Maybe it’s fixed in 10.4, maybe not. But to be enterprise ready, you need absolute integration, and the previous rev wasn’t quite there. And this problem existed through every revision of 10.3.x server.
//… and may be the key to finally gaining Apple a foothold in the corporate data center.//
OS X Server is indeed cool … but most datacenters (including ours) are already fully stacked with *nix and/or Windows.
For design and video houses, I could see it .. but that’s not a big slice o’ the server pie. Apple came way too late to the server game.
“OS X Server is indeed cool … but most datacenters (including ours) are already fully stacked with *nix and/or Windows. ”
And so what, Mac os X is an Unix system too.
Linux is growing and it also came way too late in server game…
And so what, Mac os X is an Unix system too.
You probably will not find many “data center” OS that only scales to 2 way SMP, like Mac OS X.
The current attitude how Apple supports Mac OS X also provides no indication what so ever that it should have any suitability in data center environments. This begins with the ridiculously short support cycle of about 1.5 years.
And: Apple (as an Open Group member) does not have UNIX system in the sense of UNIX98 compliance. Mac OS X is not even fully POSIX complaint.
you said “slightly” heh
Last I read Linux was not 100% POSIX complaint either, neither is Solaris, neither is Windows.
Most of the above are close, but not 100%
You usually see a MAC or two in most peoples datacenters. A FileMaker server here, a video server there, etc…
they support their server wares longer than that. stop fudding about.
Whatever happened to this in Tiger? It had been a planned feature.
Well, I’ve got a small cluster of these babies and they run just fine for my MPI simulation stuff and remote genetic analyses. In fact, I upgraded from linux boxen specifically because the hardware is of such good quality that in the long run they have a better roi (from my personal experience as a research scientist). You can slam them all you want, but in the end of the day, our linux and sun clusters have WAY more equipment problems than the G5 cluster and I’m smilin’ all the way home…
Grid computing is not the same thing as SMP…
Sorry, that’s a bit trollish. I’m being a jerk, I’m sure they do, but IIRC for a while they did not.
they support their server wares longer than that.
Support than 1.5 years definitively require a special support agreement with Apple. And that still does not mean a support cycle comparable to Sun (~ 8 years) or Red Hat (~ 5 years).
stop fudding about.
I guess for some people, uncomfortable facts or critisms in general are “fuds”. Support cycle length is a matter of complain for many server Mac OS X adopters.
Last I read Linux was not 100% POSIX complaint either,
Linux has certified POSIX subset compliance.
neither is Solaris,
Solaris might not have compliance with all POSIX standards, it has all POSIX conformance to satisfy the Single Unix Specification, which is sufficient, and yet what Mac OS X never achieved, despite their being “UNIX” ads.
By the way it is ridiculous to demand an general purpose OS to satisfy all POSIX standards for specialized OS.
neither is Windows.
Are we talking about Unix? Interix in SFU (Services for Unix) is by the way POSIX subset compliant.
Last I read Linux was not 100% POSIX complaint either,
In fact, I never read anyone write: “And so what, Linux is an Unix system too”
Are cheaper than either Windows or most other Unix servers. They are quite widely used in Education and Biotech not just art houses. Apple has had servers for many years and had a previous Unix server before that using A/UX. Next time know what your talking about before you post. The OS will scale to more than two procs. They just don’t have the hardware yet. Btw those of you throwing SMP around don’t know what it is.
1.5 years of support for server wares.. can you provide any evidence that the support only goes 1.5 years? i’ve not heard this before, may be true, i wouldnt know.. but i am curious if this is an actual fact or if it is a fact as in “i heard it on the internet”
This is driving me crazy reading this over and over again. Arghh!
“Linux is an Unix”
This is incorrect usage. The article “an” is only used when the word immediately following it starts with a vowel sound regardless of its spelling, otherwise the article “a” should be used. UNIX starts with the consonant “Y” sound, so the proper article to use would be “a” and in “Linux is a UNIX.”
OS X tiger now has optimized kernel resource locking, this means that it can scale far beyond 2 cpu systems, dual core dual processor systems have been hinted at for a while, my estimate for those are not until around h205/q106 but the software is there, and what are you complaining about anyway, the max number of processors in a mac at the moment is 2, why would panther need to support more when there is no possibility of it running on hardware with more than 2 cpu’s, also, show me a modern datacenter that doesnt cluster and has a single multi proc system, and i’ll show you a company thats wasting a shit load of money. whatever this is a fud fest
yes there is ECC ram on mac, but only on xserve g5 (not powermac)
I have worked with the Panther Server product, and its very nice it have a nice GUI that can do a lot, but not enought to entirely shield you from the unix command line. As soon as you try to do something outside the GUI things appears to be broken or incomplete, and even if it isn’t the GUI often messes things up.
One example in Panther is mail. Apple was good enough to ship with cyrus, but unfortunately cyrandm is not there so you can’t easily create shared mailboxes, manage qoutas and such. Sieve mailfiltering is not working.
I really hope that Tiger will be better in this respect, or I would prefer a server with less nice GUI that doesn’t mess things up and have full versions of serverside programs are installed just not the parts that are supported by the GUI.
“show me a modern datacenter that doesnt cluster and has a single multi proc system, and i’ll show you a company thats wasting a shit load of money. whatever this is a fud fest”
Modern computing clusters cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. A modern SMP system costs a few thousand. Have you ever been near a datacenter in your life?
umm.. multi proc systems are harder to engeneer than putting a bunch or fiber channeled boxes together. clusters are cheaper than Multiproc systems unless you are simpoly talking about a 4 way in teh back room of a small office.
when you are talking about large scale datacenters, you will be looking at either large clusters or 64 way + machines. those machines are not cheap and that is where clustering comes in handy.
I obtained the information by simply tracking availability of patches for Mac OS X relative to the version release. The timeframe varies a bit with each Mac OS X version, and sometimes come close to about 2 years. On the other hand, it can also be as short as 1.5 years.
I guess there is no simple source to point out. You have to do the analysis yourself.
Please note that in certain instances it is perfectly fine to use an “a” or “an”.
e.g. “In an hour” or “In a hour”. The reason being that the letter “h’ is almost not there.
This above information was courtesy of Rhodes University English department. Not sure if it applies to ‘American’ english but certainly to British.
What you say makes sense regarding “Unix” though. Can’t think of any similar words off hand though.
You wrote:
umm.. multi proc systems are harder to engeneer than putting a bunch or fiber channeled boxes together. clusters are cheaper than Multiproc systems unless you are simpoly talking about a 4 way in teh back room of a small office.
when you are talking about large scale datacenters, you will be looking at either large clusters or 64 way + machines. those machines are not cheap and that is where clustering comes in handy.
Save your breath. If a person hasn’t had to deal with regional data center deployments for say ATT Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint other other telcos they don’t have a freakin’ clue how clusters are the way to go when TCO is projected and billed out. Kudos for pointing out though that 4-way Intel boxes aren’t “data centers.” At best they are “small office data servers.”
Like I said, the rule is based upon the sound not the spelling. Since the word “hour” is pronounced with an “o”sound, as the “h” is silent, the proper usage would be to say “an hour has passed.”
Another example would be the word “Europe.” The pronunciation begins with a “Y” sound, so the correct use would be to say “Mary is a European.”
I’m not too familiar with the peculiarities of British English so I am only speaking as an American.