11/26   A serious question about this: http://www.apple.com/xserve
        I have zero experience with recent apple hardware or software.
        My company needs rock solid NFS hosts at low cost.  Performance isn't
        an issue.  The clients will be Solaris 2.7 and Linux 2.4.  Do any of
        you have any experience with this?  Does it sound good/bad to you and
        why?  Any info, urls, whatever is much appreciated.  BTW, this isn't
        a religious issue.  I just want something that will work and isn't
        going to cost me an arm and a leg like EMC, Hitachi, or IBM and I
        sure as hell don't want to start building my own.  Thanks!
        \_ I'd be wary of any ATA array.  IDE just isn't designed for large
           file service projects.  Also, this sort of thing looks like super
           overkill for what you describe.  I suggest finding a good supplier
           of prebuilt *nix boxes, preferably something running a BSD tcp stack
           for the sake of NFS.  I found a fibre channel array from http://corpsys.com
           that runs $1700 per .5TB.  Had no trouble with it yet under windows
           2k, mandrake, and freebsd.  Alternatively, you may want to look at
           the Sun A1000 line.  --scotsman
        \_ I would not consider the XServe as a general-purpose server at
           this point.  Apple just doesn't have a server pedigree (except
           a pedigree of abandoning their server products).  -tom
           \_ apple's xserve is an incredible piece of hardware, but overkill
              for what you need.  build a box from http://pixelusa.com.  also,
              dell has $1k 1U servers with one year of on site support and
              two more years of by-mail support.
        \_ Solaris has a great NFS support and the most featureful NFS
           implementation. Why would you want to serve Solaris client with
           anything other than a Solaris server?
           \_ because Sun's low-end server hardware sucks.
              \_ In what respect? Do you really need 3GHz Athlon CPU on an
                 NFS server? Take a look at Sun Fire V120, a very decent low-end
                 server.
              \_ their hardware also is unreasonably expensive, as is support
                 as well as people who know solaris.
                 \_ A configuration with 1 GB RAM, 72 GB of disk, and a
                    650-mhz processor is $6000.  You can get 3 much faster
                    Intel boxes for that much.
                    \_ What they gain in speed, they loose in software
                       robustness and support. Specially, if you need an
                       NFSserver, the question should be a no brainer. Also,
                       who pays the list price for Sun hardware? Talk to a
                       salesman. They'll slash the price by up to 50%
                       depending on how deep your pockets are.
                        \_ Mylex DAC960 controller.  You can put together a
                           real good x86 server for <<< $5k.  Equivalent
                           performance (and yes reliability) from Sun is gonna
                           cost you three times as much, at least.  And don't
                           tell me Sun equipment is more reliable;  some of
                           my clients run thousands of high-load servers, and
                           the Compaqs and Dells and other PC boxes of their
                           world don't suffer any more outages.  -John
                           \_ I don't want to 'put together' 20+ new boxes.
                        \_ ah.  nweaver.
                       \_ what software robustness and support do they lose?
                          only if you screw together some parts from Fry's.
                          \_ You get incomplete and unstable NFS support
                             and funky RAID software. See the original poster's
                             requirements.
           In addition to the IDE
           flakiness that someone mentioned, AFAIK, you can't mirror the boot
           disk on the xserve since it does not have an internal RAID
           controller and OS X probably does not support putting / on a
           software RAID device. Would you really like to take your server down
           for hours when the boot disk fails? If you're looking for a cost
           effective SCSI array consider the new Sun D2 (JBOD) or the 3310
           series (hardware RAID).
           \_ Read the link above:  OS X supports RAID devices.
             \_ But it doesn't support putting your root file system on software
                RAID.
                \- does apples weird file system with its weird case issues
                   manifest themselves over nfs? this is a real annoyance for
                   me when Makefile = makefile, configure = Configure etc.
                   ok tnx. --psb
           \_ Forget software RAID anyway. Performance *is* an issue, although
              it may not be the determining issue. Buy yourself a hardware
              RAID card and stick it on a cheap PC with a gigabit NIC. --dim