Intel XServe first impressions

So my first Intel XServes have arrived to to mixed reaction, not all of it good.
To answer other questions that have been banded around, there doesn't look like any option for an internal hardware RAID card. The daughtercard in the XServe G5 to which the RAID card attaches does not seem to be present, at least not with easy connectors to attach the RAID card to, so that one is out.
The next bad news is that the XServe is no longer tool-less. You used to be able to do just about anything a reasonable person would expect just by using thumbscrews. This is no longer the case. The PCIe card slots have vented faceplate in place which are held in by small screws. Therefore you need a screwdriver to add or remove a PCI card. To add insult to injury the screw is not readily accessible, can only be accessed by tilting the screwdriver at an angle, and has a tendency to drop as you remove it, potentially getting lost in the case. Bad move, Apple.
Next comes rails. What a PITA they are. I was hoping that the new rail system would be an improvement over the last. It's not. It is actually impossible for me to rack my Intel XServes in my industry-standard rails. I cannot believe Apple messed this one up so badly. I now need to get a grinder to re-tool the rails so that they will work. Bad, bad move Apple.
What about the plusses? Well, redundant power is nice. Actually including power cables and cable clips for the redundant power supply would have been nicer, though.
Well, that's the first 5 minutes out of the box. Hopefully it gets better from here.

Next comes rails...
Not sure what kind of rack you have but I found the rails to be some of the best I have worked with. I have spent the last 3 months rebuilding our server room. We use standard round hole racks. I racked 5 XServes in about 30 minutes. The only thing I noticed is there are 2 types of screws that ship with the round screw rail kit. Thread count is the same, but one set is a bit wider.
I did notice that our Dell rails won't fit in the round hole racks as they have a "Tab" that sticks out.
As for the noise I coulnd't tell, we have a ton of the new Supermicro 1U servers and they are so loud I couldn't even hear the XServers Start up.
For Camelot:
Did your's not ship with power cables? All of ours had both clips and cables. One a standard length and a 12" cable.
I will post more as I get them configured.
MBP Mac OS X (10.4.8) Network Administrator

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Got my mac mini intel singel core yesterday!! first impressions !

hi to all,yesterday i got my mac mini singel core 1,50 GHz 512 ram 60 s-ata, here are my first impressions:
of course it looks like the same;ir-sensor for the frontrow remote control is at the right side,inside the drive slot (very nice solution).It boots up faster than my old mac mini G4 1,25 Ghz 1GB ram.first of all i did a xbench test,here are my results:old mac mini g4 1,25 1 Gb ram xbench points=36,37; new mac mini intel single core xbench points=63,37 !!!Very nice and smooth system import from the old ppc os x was no problem using firewire. virtual pc 7 does not work any more.
overall rating after 1 day, very good outstanding product
greetings tobias
mac mini / pb G3 wallstreet Mac OS X (10.4.5) mac mini single core 1,5 GHZ

I also got the Core Solo and so far am very much satisfied with it. One of my highest Xbench scores was 65.40, twice as fast the score of the lowerend G4 Mac Mini. The feel of the system's respondsiveness is certainly on par with other Intel based Macs I tried at the local Apple stores. Boot time is under 30 seconds most of the time. One weird thing I noticed is that when open " About This Mac", the system identifies the processor as a 1.5GHz Intel Core Duo. However, System Profiler says it's a Core Solo. Well, I will only open "About This Mac" from now on
To answer your question, Tobias, 720p plays awesome but 1080p not looking good. The new graphic eventhough integrated is still an improvement over the graphic of the old model. Why? It supports Core Image and you get all the nice effects in Dashboard, also HD contents play much better obviously.
512MB of RAM is not enough. I'm glad that I didn't buy the Core Duo because with that $200 in difference, I can up the fund to buy a pair of 1GB DDR2 memory and a 7200RPM hard drive for upgrades. The hard drive on the Mac Mini has always been a weak link. SATA is supposed to be faster than the old IDE ATA, but from what I've seen so far, it's pretty much the same.
Powerbook 12' 1.5 | Mac Mini 1.25 | iPod Nano Mac OS X (10.4.2)

2 Intel Xserves, both running fast and both unable to connect to Server Mon

Hey guys -
Since this is happening to two identical machines, I'm wondering if I'm just not doing something right.
I have two Xserves, both essentially functioning as metadata controllers for an Xsan volume. They don't do anything else but they both run fullblast at all times.
When I initially set them up, I disabled LOM on them. However, I can't connect to either of them using the Server Monitor. This is being done locally through a belkin KVM switch, so it's nothing to do with firewall issues. They're both on two networks, a private one (for the Xsan metadata) and a public one that operates through proxy servers. Currently, neither of them can physically connect to the internet (owing to an error in the proxy settings I'm guessing), both other machines in the local network and see them and connect to them.
They're both the same configuration, with 2GB of RAM, and operating at 10.4.8. They have dual power supplies and are running into two separate UPSs for power redundancy.
I was wondering if updating to 10.4.10 would have an effect on them, or if there was a procedure to reset the PMU (or SMU or SMC or whatever they call it these days) on them.
I've been searching these forums for similar issues, but most of them seem to be related to intel xserves which actually HAD LOM turned on, and these guys do not.
If it isn't any of these issues, how would I go about thermally recalibrating both of them?

well, I done fixed it.
After I got LOM up and running (127.0.0.1 was the way to go), I was able to see that the CPU intake fans were all blowing at a strong 16K rpm. Not a good sign, even though there were no warning lights going off and everything was reported as green and normal. Since this SAN lived in a hushrack (two servers and two RAIDs all told), I first tried to isolate airflow out of the equation by removing the back enclosure and opening the front door. Even after the heat dissipated, it ran at top speed. I ran all software updates possible, installed the OS onto an empty hard drive, and still got the same thing. I yanked one of the systems out of the rack it was in and swapped the fibre card from slot 1 to slot 2. I started it back up before returning it to the rack and, goodness me, it topped off between 5K-6K. I was so happy with myself that I tossed it back into the rack, patched it all back in, and fired it up. Boom. After about a minute of being on, it rocketed upwards straight to 16K rpm.
So now it was a matter of playing the isolation game. I pulled fibre cables, I tested the power cables in both the UPS and straight into the wall, I pulled the KVM switch out and just stood by listening for any changes.
It turned out to be two bad ethernet cables, of all things. I'd plug the cable in and the fans would start their best jet engine impression. The primary metadata controller had a bad metadata cable, and the open directory master had a bad public ethernet cable.

First 'impression' of Safari 3.0 Beta in the first 5 minuites of use.

I'm using Windows Vista Home Premium and just downloaded Safari 3.0 for Windows Public Beta (Not included Quicktime)
The installation is processed smoothly.
I used it 5 minuites and my first impression is nothing but BUGs BUGs BUGs.
Alway Crash:
1. When click anything concerning Bookmarks, Safari crashes. (In other word, cannot use Bookmarks.)
2. When fill in any form, Safari crashes.
3. When access any pages with Javascript, Safari crashes.
Sometime Crash:
1. When access some pages, Safari randomly crashes. Ordinary pages such as this website itself. The symtom is both CPU core work reach 100% and needed to restart computer.
2. Randomly show message like "file not found, need reinstall." in any page, of course, even this page.
Bugs:
1. Cannot click on the button on the taskbar to minimize.
2. When minimize and restore, the Safari window going in restore down state.
3. Memory leak as I monitering RAM usage: increases more than 100MB when open Safari.
4. Font smoothing shows almost illegible.
Let down function:
1. Safari 3.0 for Windows Public Beta is the slowest web browser among all of browsers in my notebook. (IE7, Firefox, Opera, Cameleon Browser.)
STOP! saying "This is just a BETA!".
I love to test beta software and report bugs. I'm not a techical geeks so my testing method is to use them just as I always use in everyday life. No tweak or special use I squeesh to the program. I understand the BETA is not FINAL and of course, have more bugs than FINAL.
But this is not what I call bugs. I call "cannot be used."
How can you guy call this "PUBLIC" Beta? Have your programmer even see it in action in Windows before release to public?
This application is the second Apple application I experienced. (The first is iTunes.) It totally let me down because when compare with Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 I tested last year, Safari 3.0 Public Beta is not in my sight.
How can you apply guy convince me that Apple is better than Microsoft since I compare just an essential small program and found no pros, even both are in beta state?
Hope to see Beta 2 with no major crash in the first 5 minuites usage.
ASUS W7F Windows Vista Intel Centrino Duo 2.00GHz 1.5GB DDRII Ram

Downgrading via Archive and install is notoriously unreliable. It is much safer to simply retrieve your backup you made before you installed the update after an erase and install. Of course you make at least two backups. Selective file recovery may be in order, such as found in migrating from PowerPC to Intel Macs:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=435350&tstart=0

Intel Xserve won't boot from 3rd party drive in ADM

Right, I've got a Late 2006 Xserve Dual 2.66 with the normal non-RAID SAS/SATA board, which has been running fine for 2 years with a pair of non-Apple Seagate Barracuda ES 250GB drives (Bay 1 & 2), and an original 80GB ADM in Bay 3 as a spare boot disk.
Bay 1 & 2 are set up using SoftRAID and are partitioned into a boot volume (30GB) and a data volume (200GB), both RAID 1 mirrors. The boot volume is cloned nightly to Bay 3 (single volume, set up using Disk Utility). Data is backed up to a utility machine, so this is arrangement lets me handle any single drive failing.
This arrangement has worked fine for 2 years, and allows me to remotely boot off Bay 3 and run DiskWarrior or other disk maintenance software on the normal boot drive without having to drive across town with a firewire drive. I originally started with Mac OS X Server 10.4, but I'm now on Mac OS X Server 10.6.4.
Where things have come unravelled is, I need to upgrade the two 250GBs to something larger. I didn't realise that the Intel Xserve is pretty fussy with ADM sleds and the model of SATA drive they will work with. I didn't have any issues when I set up the Barracuda ES 250GB so wasn't expecting any problems this time.
I bought a pair of Seagate Constellation ES 500GB drives (well 3 actually, one to keep on the shelf as a spare).
I installed them in the sleds and inserted them in the Xserve. The green power LEDs came on but the drives weren't recognised in Disk Utility or System Profiler. I then added the jumper to set them to 1.5Gb/s and then they mounted. I went through my normal process of cloning the OS to them from a standard disk image I have of a known working OS install, ran Disk Utility to repair disk & repair permissions, Disk Warrior to check everything else (my standard paranoid procedures). Set the startup disk to the new install and rebooted. No joy, just the flashing question mark folder. Reboot with the option key, and the new volume doesn't appear in the list of available boot options.
I installed the drives in a firewire enclosure, and it booted without any problems, so it's not a corrupt install, it's something to do with the ADM sleds.
So to go back to basics, I tried initialising a single drive as a single volume and installed 10.6.4 server fresh from the DVD. Same result, no boot when in installed in ADM sled, boots fine in firewire case.
Erased drive, changed formatting to APM (rather then GPT), cloned OS, etc. Won't boot when in ADM sled, boots fine from firewire case. So that screws the theory that drives have to be GPT to boot on Intel hardware.
So I ordered a set of WD RE3 500GB drives (x 3) and repeated this whole process. Same deal, boots fine in firewire, won't boot when installed in ADM. GPT vs APM doesn't make any difference.
Try #3. Ordered desktop variants rather than server class drives. So armed with a pair of WD Caviar Black 500GB. Same deal, boot fine from firewire, will not boot when installed in ADM. Also required jumpers for 1.5GB/s and also the undocumented pins 7&8 (apparently this might be related to the new Advanced Format they are using)
Try #4
A pair of Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB. This is where it gets tricky. One of the Barracuda will boot the Xserve when installed in an ADM, and one will not. So 2 Barracuda 7200.12, both same model number (ST3500418AS), both same firmware (CC38), yet they behave differently.
Try #5
Barracuda ES.2 250GB (x 3). Won't boot in ADM, will boot firewire.
Try #6
WD Caviar SE16 250GB (WD2500KS)
Boots in ADM (Yay!!) and firewire
Try #7
WD Caviar SE16 500GB x 2 (WD5000AAKS)
Boots in ADM and firewire
I've managed to get access to G5 Xserve (2.3DP) so I've repeated all this testing on it as well. The G5 doesn't care about the model of drive and boots from any of them using a 10.5.6 install with APM formatted drives.
I've tried all these drives in 4 different models of ADM sled. One thing I have determined is that the model of sled determines if you need to use the 1.5GB/s jumper. I have 2 sleds from G5's, they require the jumper, a 80GB Intel ADM sled with separate data and power plugs requires the jumper, and an Intel 160GB ADM sled with the ribbon cable and combined data/power plug doesn't require the 1.5GB/s jumper. APM vs GPT formatting again makes no difference.
So on the Intel machine, the drives work in the sleds, appear as normal drives on desktop or in Disk Utility when logged in, and also appear as normal drives when connected via SSH if Auto Login is disabled. So to me they appear to be working drives.
It appears to me that something changed at a low level between the Barracuda ES and ES.2 generations of drives (for WD drives as well since the Caviar SE16 that boots is a similar age to the Barracuda ES)
So then why won't it boot from them? Is there some magic dance I've missed?
And how come one of the 7200.12 will boot, while another identical model won't?
Any tips or suggestions greatly appreciated.

I don't have an answer for you, but you deserve thanks for all the useful hardware information you posted from your trial-and-error testing.
My impression has that the XServes need specific kinds of firmware and hardware monitors on their drives in order for everything to function smoothly. My own efforts swapping drives in ADMs has produced "mixed results" to put it mildly. It would be so much easier if we knew what kinds of drives worked properly in what kinds of ADMs and on which Macs/XServes.

Intel Xserve will NOT boot from hard disk drive

I have two Intel Xserves 2.0 QC machines
I have tried to re-install version 10.4.11 OS (don't ask) onto a Hard disk drive that is in a Disk drive caddy and inserted in the machine.
When booting from The installation DVD media
The disk is seen by the "Disk Utility" (the disk is partitioned as GUID boot) and the installation proceeds to the disk.
Once the first pass of the installation is complete and the system reboots, the system shows the folder and ? mark.
If I boot and hold "ALT" key to view all avaialble boot options the Hard Disk Drive does NOT appear as valid boot disk.
It does show, the still inserted Installation DVD.
I CAN boot from an external firewire drive and the Hard disk drive is visible to the OS once logged in.
I have tried different caddy postions (left, middle and right)
I have tried bona fide Apple supplied Disk drives
I have tried various different caddies
I have tried installing Operating System 10.5.* and 10.6.8 server
I have run SMC reset and system reset
But still I cannot boot off from any Hard Disk Drive inserted in a caddy at the front of the system.
Has anyone seen this behaviour?
Is it fixable?
Do I have replace something like the Hard Disk Drive back plane circuit board? Or even the main logic board?
I have now run out of ideas and cannot find any help in discussions or just googling.
ANY help would be very appreciated
Regards
Tony

Antonio Hi !
QC = Quad core or QX as it is written on the "pull out" serial number tab at rear of system
I have 3 late 2006 Intel xserves
On my intial posting I declared 2 were 2.0 machines - when I was trying to be concise
2 of the macines are 2.66 systems and 1 is 2.0 system - all are QX machines
the 2.0 and 1 of the 2.66 will NOT boot from the ADM and disk inside the system - whereas the other 2.66 system will.
I have many different Caddies and these have different product/model number labels
603-9965
603-9545
603-9796
these are marked "intel SATA"
The 80Gb was only one of the drives tested - I have used Seagate 400Gb 750Gb and 1Tb - all of which have been used in systems at one time or another
and as I said the drives ARE visible once the operating system (either installation DVD or external firewire are booted from) - they are just NOT visible when the system is searching for boot media.
Thanks for the guide - I will look through that and continue to try and find an answer

Intel Xserve No Activity Lights

Hey I'm trying to find out what could be wrong with our new Intel Xserve. It's fresh out of the box and set up on it's rack. We try to turn it on and it looks as if everything is well but the blue activity lights don't come on. We tried changing the startup method, and that doesn't work either. Anyone have any ideas?
BTW, this is my first post. Glad to be here!
Intel Xserve

Hey there,
Welcome to the board..
Had exactly the same problem 3 weeks ago. I pulled the thing completely apart and rebuilt and reset all the hard reset buttons inside. Still no joy. Had a spare's kit so replaced the logic board and away it went perfectly. Spoke to Apple techincal and they replaced the logic board from my spare's kit. They offered to swap the entire machine but time was not on my side so this was the quicked way to solve the issue. I did spend 1 hour on the phone to them to check and they agreed with my prognosis. Interested to know if you get any further with yours than I did - fingers crossed for you. Guessing there was a dud batch or similar.
Oli

Intel Xserve not using full CPU

When submitting a batch to qmaster, I notice my other g5 machines utilize almost all the processor, and on the intel xserve, all 4 CPUs usually max out at 40% tops. Is this a limitation, to be expected, etc?

Things do look clean - not familiar with all of the Processes, but some of the common "culprits" do not appear. Nice job in keeping these to a minimum. Most people have 60-80 going. Maybe someone else can look down your list and find something that can be eliminated easily for NLE work. I just don't see any potential problems, but remember I do not recognize some of those.
I like the Virtual Memory setting, with only one question: you mention a partition on the RAID 0. Why a partition? The reason that I ask is that Windows first sees your 2 HDD's as one (the RAID), then it sees your partitions as several. If accessing what it now thinks are 2, or more, physical HDD's, it's telling the controller to get the heads in a couple of places at the same time. You probably have a good reason for doing it this way, but it does throw up a yellow flag to me. Having the RAID managed by the MoBo chip is not the fastest/best, but is usually more than adequate. It does save on a US$400 RAID card with multiple channels/chips.
You have provided me, and others, with food for thought. I'll keep looking over your data, but just see nothing, except for the Page File on a partition, that might affect performance.
One test that I'd run would be a slight re-config on your Scratch Disks. I'd do a Save_As, or a Save_As_a_Copy for your Project. Leave your original totally alone. Do a test with the Scratch Disks set to "Same as Project." This will put them on the RAID 0. Then, perform the same operations and monitor the time. Unfortunately, you're investing hours into this, but you might get enough of a performance increase to justify it for future Projects. One way around the time, would be to do a "test" Project with shorter versions of similar Assets. Do all processing on that Project, as configured, and time the results. Do the Save_As, make the changes to the Scratch Disks, and process again. Any difference?
Good luck, and thanks for gathering the data,
Hunt

Intel xserve activity lights

First gen intel xserve from a long time ago, and was running 10.4.x
I remember it used to have 4 blue leds on the system activity lights on the front of the machine compared to the g5's 2 blue... (and remembered reading that had to do with the 4 cores).
As of recently, and haven't paid attention, I had to upgrade to 10.5, and then to 10.5.7 and the other day when I was downstairs, noticed that the 4 system leds were gone and it now just looks like the g5's when it's not doing anything. However, when I run compressor and have all 4 going full blast and look carefully at the front, it does still look 4 sets, but i havent been able to see just the four individual lights.
I've just been accustomed to looking at the front and seeing 4 individual blue lights, so was wondering if it sounds normal...

Hey there,
Welcome to the board..
Had exactly the same problem 3 weeks ago. I pulled the thing completely apart and rebuilt and reset all the hard reset buttons inside. Still no joy. Had a spare's kit so replaced the logic board and away it went perfectly. Spoke to Apple techincal and they replaced the logic board from my spare's kit. They offered to swap the entire machine but time was not on my side so this was the quicked way to solve the issue. I did spend 1 hour on the phone to them to check and they agreed with my prognosis. Interested to know if you get any further with yours than I did - fingers crossed for you. Guessing there was a dud batch or similar.
Oli

Connect Intel Xserve and G4 Xserve?

I have a new Intel Xserve which I upgraded to from a G4 Xserve, which I think I'd like to keep and use to run FileMaker to serve a website. (Perhaps also use it for IP failover or backups, too, but first things first.)
How to configure them? Should I connect the G4 to the internet on en0 and to the router on en1? If the G4 is an OD replica, how does it talk to the Intel?
Any advice appreciated to point me in the right direction.

It all depends. If the router can also act as a reliable firewall, connect it to a switch and hook up both servers to the switch. You could then make whichever one an OD master and the other a Replica.
If the router isn't a real firewall, throw one in, connect to a switch, and then connect the servers to the switch.
If you're expecting the router to just be a roouter, and make your server the firewall, you're probably not taking the best approach and making you're computing life more difficult.
I don't mean to sound like a dope, but you should post back with a more complete description of your network, and what you can afford to put in your network. You can do a lot with an OS X Server or two if that's what you have, but there are better alternatives for some parts of your network.
hth
Jeff

Can't Power on Intel XServe

I'm unable to sucsesfully power up an intel XServe. After I plug back in the power it boots up, at least by looking at the front panel lights. The fan kicks into high, the power light comes on, the first set of activity lights come on and the system id light comes on. However, I don't get anything on the monitor. I have removed all the RAM thinking it was a memory issue but that had no effect. I took out the PRAM battery, removed all the drives. Still nothing. If I push the power/standby it seems to go into standby. If I then power it down and restart via the front pwr button it seems to cycle on and off or perhaps sleep. The pwr light comes on for 5 seconds, the system id light flashess 3 times then stedy, and the RAM lights come when the pwr light is on. The machine did come on last week but seems to have died sometime after last friday. Any suggestions would be great.
Brad

Brad, did you happen to have server monitor set up on this box? It would have been nice because you would be able to see the status on a remote machine.
Are you sure it is not actually booting properly but with no video? Can you ping it from another machine?
If you turn it on you say the sytem id light is flashing?

Intel Xserve with Leopard Server 10.5.5 won't let me in via login

A power outage appears to have created some issues with my intel Xserve, running Leopard server 10.5.5
The System identifier light was blinking, so I booted up from the Leopard disk and found out that my mirrored internal array needed to be rebuilt. No problem, 4 hours later, I repair permissions on the mirrored internal array, everything gets "repaired". Change bootup disk to the internal 10.5.5 mirrored array and reboot. System Identifier light stopped blinking, things were looking good.
The login screen comes up and when I put in the admin username and password, the screen does the shake of the wrong login.
What's weird is, on my laptop I can use Server Admin, Workgroup Manager, and the screen sharing for the server....with the admin username and password.
So, I figure, perhaps the mirror rebuild requires me to reset the admin password. So, boot back up from the Leopard Server install DVD, run the password utility. and reset the main account password.
I change the boot drive back to the internal mirror, same thing. I'm stuck. I can't get past the login screen on the actually server....or via the screen sharing...and Server Monitor appears to be stuck at 'waiting for response'. I can, again, use Server Admin and Workgroup Manager on my laptop and make changes to the X server software....but I can't log into the X serve.
My webpage, wiki, etc....are all serving fine. But, I'd like to be able to figure out what I'm doing wrong...log back in and run super duper, etc.
Help...please...

Spent all day with apple support. They said it sounded like the LADP database was corrupted. They had me try to login as root, via an opendir account, etc. No luck.
So, they suggested I do a fresh install of the Leopard server on an external drive. Did that. They then suggested I use my laptop and the workgroup manager app to log in to the xserver, export users, groups and computers....and to copy over the library/collaboration folder to the external "clean install" of Leopard server.
Did that and followed the instructions to "relink" the metadata.plist files in each group, to the GUID to the groups in workgroup manager. First issue, they weren't different GUID strings.
Well, that didn't work...kept getting file not found error. When trying to access the domain.com/groups/groupname...it should've asked for authentication. And let me into that wiki...but no, apache error page.
So, they had me create a new "test" group....added a user. Start and stopped the web...etc. This didn't create a new wiki entry (when we replaced my custom index.html to the default index where groups/wikis/blogs populate automatically at the main). And, there's no new "test" folder in the library/collaboration files.
They then said "well, it must be because you don't have reverse DNS configured right, that's why the new wikis won't set up". I've contacted dyndns.com...but I don't think that's the problem.
So, I've rebooted my xserver to the internal drive. The wiki and blog is still there, still accessible the way I like....I still can't login to the xserver.
So, I'm wondering, if anyone knows a way I can boot up my xserve in the target drive mode, hook up my laptop and replace / swap whatever admin files so that when I boot up my xserve, I can login again.
There has to be a way to hard fix a hidden file? Replace a DB? Some awesome terminal command to get me in and fix the admin account / password....
Or, does anyone know if the reverse DNS issue applecare cites is legit? Doesn't make sense how, the same public ip and domain name, that's worked for some time...suddenly doesn't???
I'm hoping someone can help me.

G4 Mac OSX 10.4 server with RAID & sharepoints - Intel Xserve & RAID?

Hey all,
so we need to migrate our G4 Power Mac running Mac OSX 10.4 server with about 60 user accounts and a RAID with about 50 sharepoints to a brand new Intel Xserve with 10.4 server and a brand new RAID.
My plan for the server part of things is to put the new server online with the old one still running, make the new one a replica of the old one, then take the old one offline and promote the new one to a master.
But what to do about the sharepoints and several terabytes of data? Is there any way to do this except manually copying the data and re-creating all the sharepoints? That wouldn't be the complete end of the world as long as all the accounts/groups come across via the replication, but it'd be nice if there's a smart way to do this.
Thanks for your help!

Never tried the replica promote so I can't say that it will work. The way I migrated from 10.4 to new hardware 10.4 server was to set the new server up with exactly the same setup, DNS, IP and so on. This requires the old server be off the network for a bit. Once it was running I would have a backup of the LDAP/OD info made directly from the old server in Server Admin. Import this on the new server and all users and passwords are back in place. Now as for the share points and the data the best thing to do is to attach the old RAID to the new unit first. Hopefully you have a way to have both RAIDs connected at the same time to the new unit since that would be best.
In the interest of downtime you could immediately add the share points back in to WGM pointing to the old RAID drives. This gives you the free time to migrated the data when you want to. Make sure you know the right settings for each protocols which you use for each share point (AFP, SMB, FTP, NFS).
Now that your up and running you can move data by whatever means you see fit to the new RAID keeping in mind you want to keep permissions in-tacked. There are many clone or sync option out there and you don't need to move all the share points at once.
The main reason I chose this method is it offers a fall back and no client reconfiguring. If something is not working on the new server you can simply plug the old RAID back to the old server and your up. Second is that if you try to run both server at the same time you would need to create a whole new identity for the new server (IP, DNS and so on). Migrate data via a Network (very slow) and reconfigure all clients to point at the new server. I've done this at least 10+ times at different locations and even before the easy 10.4 backup of LDAP/OD info. Making sure you had a clean LDAP was never so easy. All swap outs took less then an hour of down time with maybe 2 hour pre-swap setup. Data movement to a new RAID was not always the case but by using this method you can move data later which is the most time consuming process of the whole swap.

Intel Xserve Blower for Power Supply 1 Out drops to 0 RPM momentarily

10.5.6 Server. Machine is less than a year old. Yesterday I configured Server Monitor for the first time and have received two notifications of the blower for the Power Supply Out changing to zero RPM. It is momentary and goes back to normal.
Everything else is in the normal range -- temp, voltage.
Is this normal or indication of future failure?

Hi Forum folks.
I've had a 6-month (ish) Xserve doing the same thing. Every day, at least once a day, I'd get an email / SMS, saying the power supply or blower was having a momentary problem.
After shutting down the server, I pulled out the Power Supply Units, and checked them out.
Turns out, one of them had a slightly damaged heat sink (damage visible without opening the PSU). So, I swapped it for a spare I'd purchased. And then got the damaged unit (damaged internally at factory by the look of it) replaced by my Apple Reseller.
Note: the newer Intel XServes (early 2008) have a 750w PSU, compared to a 650w PSU, in the 2006 Intel XServes. The older PSUs fit in the newer Xserves, but they DO NOT function. (You'll get an error in Server monitor).
Hope that helps,
Cheers,
Derek

Intel Xserve RAID Support?

I couldn't find any mention of RAID support on the new intel xserves. Does any have any info on them. I was hoping this generation would have embedded support (no more cards).

My first batch of Intel XServes have shipped from
China. Once they get here I'll be able to tell
whether the drive bays use the daughtercard/cable
setup that facilitates the Hardware RAID Card as used
in the XServe G5. They're due in on Monday...
You lucky (and brave early adopter) guy. It would be interesting to know the controller chip on the motherboard, if System Profiler provides that information. There are a few (non-Windows) RAID vendors out there who are doing RAID 5 via driver with certain controller chipsets. Perhaps that's a path. If done right, and with journaling, it could work and be reliable. It would be a processor hit, but with all of those cores floating around, it might be doable as a low-end alternative to an XRAID.
Russ
Xserve G5 2.0 GHz 2 GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.8) Apple Hardware RAID, ATTO UL4D, Exabyte VXA-2 1x10 1u

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