When Steve Jobs announced that the Mac Pro meant the completion of the Intel transition, I imagine every systems administrator listening had a small heart attack before he announced the new Xserve. While I hold no doubts at all that the Mac Pro has the power and the storage capabilities to make it an excellent server, the Xserve's form factor, remote monitoring capabilities and overall rack-mount server sensibilities make it a must-have for any serious Mac infrastructure. And the new Xserve doesn't disappoint.
Like the Mac Pro, it uses the dual-core Xeon processors from the Woodcrest family, and it uses them in a dual-processor configuration, giving it quad-core performance. Apple claims that it is more than five times faster than the existing Xserve G5 models. Each processor has an independent 1.33-GHz frontside bus.
Like the existing Xserves, it sports three hot-swappable SATA drive bays and remote monitoring capabilities with Apple's Server Monitor tool, and it can be controlled remotely using Apple Remote Desktop. It also continues to offer two onboard Gigabit Ethernet ports and two eight-lane PCI Express slots (one of which is PCI-X).
One difference, however, is that you no longer need to sacrifice a PCI slot if you want to attach a monitor to the Xserve. The new Xserve now includes a built-in ATI Radeon X1300 graphics card with 64MB of SDRAM and sports a mini-DVI connector. While the Xserve continues to be rack-mountable and operates perfectly in a headless environment, it is now equally usable by those in smaller organizations that want to be able to configure it from an attached screen and keyboard. This is something that has long been a sore point in many small organizations that have wanted the power of an Xserve along with the ability to manage it locally without having to lose a PCI slot to install a video card (or buy Apple Remote Desktop).
The new Xserve will ship in October, with a base configuration that includes two dual-core 2-GHz processors, 1GB of 667-MHz DDR2 RAM and a single 80GB SATA drive for $2,999. Build-to-order configurations include processor speeds up to 3 GHz, 32GB of RAM, an additional load-sharing power supply and up to 2.25TB of onboard storage. PCI Express cards for Fiber Channel connection to Apple's Xserve RAID and SCSI devices and additional network ports are also available.