“Parallels, known for its virtualization solutions for both desktops and servers, has announced another option for creating virtual servers on Apple’s Xserve. The recently announced Parallels Server for Mac Bare Metal Edition lets admins create Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux virtual servers without the overhead of running Mac OS X Server as a host OS.”
If it has some technology like vMotion/DRS it can be pretty interesting… with 2 or 3 Mac Minis you have a high availability low consumption cluster.
Mac Minis? This is for Xserve.
xServe is recommended, but not required.
http://download.parallels.com/doc/psbm/en/Ltr_PSBM_SBE_DS.pdf
Copy&pasted from the specs:
System Requirements
Hardware Requirements
• 1.5 GHz or higher x64-bit processor with Intel VT-x or AMD-V hardware virtualization support
• 2 GB RAM minimum (4 GB recommended )
• Ethernet network adapter
• DVD-ROM drive
Unfortunately, the chips that Apple use in the current Mac Minis don’t support VT-x.
That is reserved for, well, damn near every other model of Core 2 Duo in production. Just not the ones Apple use. (or the 2MB cache ones, with the 2.13GHz and 1.86GHz models exceptions)
I blame this on Intel. Which Core 2 Duo chips support VT-x seems random and arbitrary.
Exactly, why not just run ESXi? It’s free and well supported and has great management software should you need to scale out. Otherwise, works great on it’s own.
Why would one want apple’s HW to run server workloads (where usability argument does not hold)? $3K for a single-socket quad-core server and $4.5K for dual-socket? That seems higher than competing offerings… (I can get a dual-socket Nehalem with 2 GPUs for ~$3.5K from Supermicro). Although I’m not a server hw purchasing expert at all.
I also don’t see the reason.
Apple server hardware is only meant for Mac shops, there are lots of better options out there if you are hardware shopping without specific OS requirements.
I believe the value is in getting OS X server with unlimited client license with the server. Don’t buy servers either so don’t know if that is a great value, but may be if you need the features for a small company.
For a website a dedicated Linux server, or Amazon aws or Engineyard etc. would probably be a better option, atleast that’s what all the servers our company uses run on.
maybe the macosx license only allows to run on apple hardware, thus the virtualization software has to run on xserve