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No ability to have more than one hard drive (No RAID possibilities) That's why it has six external storage ports each capable of pushing 20GBps. Single power

by seiji 13y ago

No ability to have more than one hard drive (No RAID possibilities) That's why it has six external storage ports each capable of pushing 20GBps. Single power supply Workstation, not server. Compare this to the dell workstations Large, noisy, ugly, inefficient uses of power?

e40 13y ago
But the OS can't be raided, since it's on the single, internal SSD. EDIT: OK, I suppose you could run it on an external drive.
- seiji 13y ago
  Good point. The best answer there is: that's what Time Machine backups are for. Time Machine backups lag your actual storage by 10 minutes to an hour, but it's okay for most uses. If you're worried about important data, you'd want to use external storage arrays to store your pictures/videos/genome data. Then your redundancy is handled in individual storage chassis configurations. Promise and LaCie have popular faster-than-a-single-ssd thunderbolt arrays.
cones688 13y ago
> That's why it has six external storage ports each capable of pushing 20GBps. Is it just me or something gives me the creeps about running an OS off an external drive... > Large, noisy, ugly Since when did the requirements of a workstation class Xeon desktop become "Super-compact" and "beautiful"?! I would agree on the noise, except no-one has actual heard these things running in a realistic environment so there is currently no comparison.
- btian 13y ago
  Everyone in my office has a workstation under the desk. Note that it's a workstation not a server. So people do care about form factor, power usage, and acoustics.
- huxley 13y ago
  > Is it just me or something gives me the creeps about running an OS off an external drive... The parent was talking about having your assets on externals if you had high storage requirements, the OS can live perfectly fine with any number of apps on the SSD. > Since when did the requirements of a workstation class Xeon desktop become "Super-compact" and "beautiful"?! We weren't always so utilitarian, Silicon Graphics did gang-buster business for a long time selling style and compactness in the workstation class. Yes, SGI eventually crashed and burned, but Apple is in a far better position to experiment with this, given that they have about $147 billion of cash on hand.
  - gaius 13y ago
    SGI crashed and burned because they stopped making beautiful MIPS boxes and tried to make ugly Windows PCs. When the company imploded, the CEO who made that decision went to work for Microsoft. I'm not even kidding...

by seiji 13y ago

e40 13y ago

But the OS can't be raided, since it's on the single, internal SSD. EDIT: OK, I suppose you could run it on an external drive.

seiji 13y ago
Good point. The best answer there is: that's what Time Machine backups are for. Time Machine backups lag your actual storage by 10 minutes to an hour, but it's okay for most uses. If you're worried about important data, you'd want to use external storage arrays to store your pictures/videos/genome data. Then your redundancy is handled in individual storage chassis configurations. Promise and LaCie have popular faster-than-a-single-ssd thunderbolt arrays.

cones688 13y ago

> That's why it has six external storage ports each capable of pushing 20GBps. Is it just me or something gives me the creeps about running an OS off an external drive... > Large, noisy, ugly Since when did the requirements of a workstation class Xeon desktop become "Super-compact" and "beautiful"?! I would agree on the noise, except no-one has actual heard these things running in a realistic environment so there is currently no comparison.

btian 13y ago
Everyone in my office has a workstation under the desk. Note that it's a workstation not a server. So people do care about form factor, power usage, and acoustics.
huxley 13y ago
> Is it just me or something gives me the creeps about running an OS off an external drive... The parent was talking about having your assets on externals if you had high storage requirements, the OS can live perfectly fine with any number of apps on the SSD. > Since when did the requirements of a workstation class Xeon desktop become "Super-compact" and "beautiful"?! We weren't always so utilitarian, Silicon Graphics did gang-buster business for a long time selling style and compactness in the workstation class. Yes, SGI eventually crashed and burned, but Apple is in a far better position to experiment with this, given that they have about $147 billion of cash on hand.
- gaius 13y ago
  SGI crashed and burned because they stopped making beautiful MIPS boxes and tried to make ugly Windows PCs. When the company imploded, the CEO who made that decision went to work for Microsoft. I'm not even kidding...