Apple put the final nail in the xserves coffin in january 2011 when it officially. Apple xserve xserve g5 technology overview pdf download. Combined with apples elegant management software and the new xserve raid nas offering, the xserve g5 is a powerful server. The g5 as server cpu while it is the xserve and not the powermac that is apples server platform, we could not resist the temptation to test the g5 based machine as a server too. In an xserve you have three disk bays and you can have an internal raid card instead of using software raid. Oct 09, 2016 apple put the final nail in the xserves coffin in january 2011 when it officially stopped selling rackmounted servers. Virginia tech migrates g5 supercomputer to apple xserves. Setting up and maintaining linux software raid on an apple xserve. Jun 03, 2005 the g5 as server cpu while it is the xserve and not the powermac that is apples server platform, we could not resist the temptation to test the g5 based machine as a server too.
Apple put the final nail in the xserve s coffin in january 2011 when it officially stopped selling rackmounted servers. See chapter 5, updating or installing software on xserve g5 systems, on page 65 for information about updating or installing software on your server. Despite the speed increase, the xserve g5 s price remains unchanged. I currently have an apple xserve g5, running osx server 10. I think the disk performance in the newer g5s is better than in earlier models and maybe slightly better than in xserve. Jan 04, 2005 xserve g5 ships with an unlimited client edition of mac os x server version 10. Mar 23, 2004 with dual g5 processing power, massive storage, incredible io performance and apples mac os x server software included, xserve g5 is affordable, easy to manage and easy to cluster.
Jan 21, 2011 never having used software raid before, this was quite a steep learning curve for me, especially given that the xserve g5 is a new world class of mac, which means that it uses the apple partition map partitioning scheme, which is fairly rare in a linux world that is largely involved with master boot records. As predicted, apple today upgraded its xserve 1u rack optimized server to deliver dual 64bit 2. Dec 14, 20 initially i am using information from the ubuntuforums grub efi discussion thread in debuggiing grub. Although it wasnt near as popular as linux and window servers, it still had its place among macos heavy enterprises. None of my colleagues or friends have a mac either. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided. How apple g5 xserve manual, many people also need to acquire before driving. Like the xserve g5, the xserve raid uses apples hotswappable harddrive modules.
Each module can hold a hard drive offering up to 250gb of storage, and each has a dedicated data channel and an. Xserve g5 ships with an unlimited client access license of mac os x server that allows users to connect an unlimited number of mac, windows or linux clients to the. It came with no drives so ive had to put some new ones in. You will need to edit one file to add the logic board id of the xserve so that the os thinks its a supported board. Virginia tech, whose g5 macbased supercomputing cluster made headlines last fall as the third fastest supercomputer in the world, has announced it plans to migrate the cluster from power mac g5 desktop computers to apples recently released xserve g5 1u server. While it is the xserve and not the powermac that is apples server. This guide was created as an overview of the linux operating system, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter. Unfortunately theres no raid controller in these servers, so software. In the meantime, ordinary power macintosh g3 and g4 models were rebranded as macintosh server g3 and macintosh server g4 with some alterations to the hardware, such as added gigabit ethernet cards. The xserve g5 saw one update, in january 2005, with processor speeds up to 2. Apple xserve howtoforge linux howtos and tutorials. Xserve g5 vs g5 server with os x server apple community. However, the mac market is waiting for an xserve with a powerpc g5 chip. While the xserve g5 is apples current designated server hitter, panther runs on any g3 or better, and the powermac g5 has become a popular choice for rackless environments.
Server mode is disabled pmu driver 2 initialized for. Linux on an apple xserve efi only machine just another. If you connect the xserve, via target disk mode, to a mac that is able to run a newer version of macos than you should be able to install everything up to 10. I configured a poweredge 1750 from dell which matches the dual xserve g5 model as closely as possible dual gigabit ethernet, the 80 gb drive, etc. Xserve g5 models before april 2005 shipped with mac os x. For that matter, dual and quadcore twosocket powerpc g4 and g5 xserves run the same leopard server os and are managed the same way, albeit without xeon xserve s lightsout and x86 guest os. The apple g5 xserve running yhpc is an ideal platform for genomics research, taking advantage of the 970s incredible 32bit performance and lightweight, flexible linux os, said kai staats, ceo of terra soft solutions. We would like to show you a description here but the site wont allow us. Instead, the company started pushing server customers toward mac pros and. I know that i could format my os x and install linux and be done with it but linux distos have no support for the storage disk array that i currently have.
Despite my arguments saying its not worth it, they want it in. With recent os x server software updates, features he requires has been eliminated. Xserve raid is a massstorage device that was offered by apple inc. Preliminary xserve g5 support comes to yhpc linux macworld. Brooks, apples server hardware product manager, said today at fose 2004 in washington that the dualprocessor version is hardwarestreamlined for tight coupling in an apple workgroup cluster, in contrast with the. Apple xserve ppc g5 has no os on it cant install new one. Xserve is a line of rack unit computers designed by apple inc.
Apple is eyeing the enterprise for its xserve model and building support from some major software names. The apple g5 xserve running yhpc is an ideal platformfor genomics research, taking advantage of the 970s incredible 32bitperformance and lightweight, flexible linux. The xsan software san product, unveiled sunday, is a more open standardsbased and blockoriented offering than windows storage server. Mac os x server provides open source, standardsbased workgroup and internet services without the complexity inherent in linux and other unixbased solutions. Maybe use your package manager to see if any packages provides sh. Now that i got this decent new dual g5 box, i wanted to install linux. Nov, 2003 apple is eyeing the enterprise for its xserve model and building support from some major software names. I have tried multiple debian and alike operating systems ubuntu, fedora, installing debian ppc on xserve g5.
Customers can choose from two standard server configurations and one cluster node configuration, as well as an array of buildtoorder options. Install debian software raid via 3 sata drives linux forum. One issue i ran into is i could not find a linux driver for the xserve raid controller, so i ended up installing linux onto a attached usb drive. Apples xserve raid offers storage flexibility, speed. The xserve ran multiple trials, with one disk and with three disks in a software raid 0 array, while the xserve g5 had three disks in a hardware raid 5 array. I wouldnt go the way of putting another os on xserve hardware. Xserve g5 ships with an unlimited client access license of mac os x server that allows users to connect an unlimited number of mac, windows or linux clients to the server without additional. I am needing to get away from the xserve print services anyway so i was in the need of a windows machine regardless. In the meantime, ordinary power macintosh g3 and g4 models were rebranded as macintosh server g3 and macintosh server g4 with some alterations to. Jan 05, 2005 xserve g5 ships with an unlimited client access license of mac os x server that allows users to connect an unlimited number of mac, windows or linux clients to the server without additional. What to do with apple xserve early 2008 macrumors forums. Apple ships xsan, upgrades xserve g5 computerworld. I recently was given the job to deploy a fairly lowpower g5 xserve in our office.
Previous g5 or g4 xserve used open firmware boot loader in. Killing the xserve was step one in apples plan for the. Performancewise, the dualprocessor xserve g5 compares well with linuxbased x86 servers. I had found articles online that talked about swapping out the backplane with a standard sata controller, but that is more effort than i wanted to put in for this project. Xserve raid held up to 14 hotswappable ultraata hard drives, and had a capacity of 10. I have a colleague that migrated his xserve os x environment to linux to get the enterprise level functionality he needed from a modern os. All apple power macintosh systems up to and including the g4 use processors supported by this kernel. Other than that id be looking for bug reports in debian. Jan 26, 2007 i currently have an apple xserve g5, running mac os x server and i want to install and configure the machine to run ispconfig or an equivalent application but cannot find any such product. Panther server integrates leading open source and open standards software with easytouse management tools that make it easy to deploy popular open source solutions for mac, windows and linux clients. If i could ever get linux to work i would love to play around with bacula or amanda. The apple g5 xserve running yhpc is an ideal platform for genomics research, taking advantage of the 970s incredible 32bit performance and lightweight, flexible linux.
Back in 2010, apple surprised us all when it killed the xserve. Soon after, apple updated the xserve and xserve raid to allow the use of 500 gb hard drives. Apple xserve g4, g5 yellow dog linux fixstars solutions. Most systems use this kernel flavour, which supports the powerpc 601, 603, 604, 740, 750, and 7400 processors. Linux software raid on an apple xserve g5 with yellow dog linux. Never having used software raid before, this was quite a steep learning curve for me, especially given that the xserve g5 is a new world class of mac, which means that it uses the apple partition map partitioning scheme, which is fairly rare in a linux world that is largely involved with master boot records.
These arent supported with linux file systems, but are simulated by macos. We chose a 64node xserve g5 cluster over an amdbased cluster running linux, said jonathan cohen, director of the center for the study of brain. Yet sometimes its so far to get the apple g5 xserve manual book, also in various other countries or cities. An outline of the configuration used to boot the linux installer and linux os. Installing linux on a g5 clusternode xserve laforges home page. The problem is, im trying to install linux, specifically ubuntu. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple begins shipping xserve g5 to customers apple. Xserve g5 xserve g5 apples xserve g5 packs highdensity powerpc g5 computing power and fast, affordable storage in a 1u rackoptimized enclosure. Its relatively rare compared to linux around here, but some of our. Introduced in 2002, it was apples first designated server hardware design since the apple network server in 1996.
Hi, i have never had a problem installing linux on an apple system until now. It is software raid, ive followed all the linux guides on configuring it and none of them worked. See chapter 6, installing or replacing server components, on page 69 for details on working with the drive modules and internal components of the server. Jul 23, 2009 169 thoughts on linux on an apple xserve efi only machine chris post author 22 february, 20 at 6.