Specifications

12
Technology Overview
Xserve
When configured with the 750GB 7200-rpm SATA drive, Xserve delivers an
outstanding 76MB/s per drive while supporting up to 2.25TB in a three-drive 1U
enclosure. When configured with the 300GB 15,000-rpm SAS drive, Xserve delivers
a breakthrough 126MB/s per drive with an average random access seek time of
3.5ms—ideal for high-workload applications like databases and mail servers.
Server Performance
The balanced hardware architecture of Xserve provides a robust mix of processor,
memory, storage, and network performance. Running Mac OS X Server software
optimized for the Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor, Xserve can provide critical network
and file services to large client populations—no matter whether Macintosh, Windows,
or Linux clients. The advanced architecture and optimized operating system provide
a dramatic increase in server performance.
File services
Delivering outstanding file server performance requires more than fast processors.
The server system must also provide outstanding storage and network performance.
Apple tested Xserve and Xserve G5 against the popular NetBench benchmark to test
SMB/CIFS performance of the Samba stack built into Mac OS X Server, and ran an
internal AFP testing tool against the AFP stack of both systems.
AFP and SMB performance
Xserve delivers up to 2.5 times the network file server performance running AFP
and SMB services.
Xserve G5
Dual 2.3GHz G5
Xserve
Quad 3.0GHz Xeon
Baseline
2.5x
AFP results
Xserve G5
Dual 2.3GHz G5
Xserve
Quad 3.0GHz Xeon
Baseline
2.3x
NetBench 7.0.3 results
Testing conducted by Apple in October 2006 using preproduction quad 3.0GHz Xeon-based Xserve units; Xserve G5 systems were shipping units.
Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of Xserve.
MySQL performance
Databases require excellent memory performance and disk performance in addition
to raw processor performance to perform well. Super Smack is a popular tool for
MySQL used for benchmarking, stress testing, and load generation.
Super Smack 1.1
Xserve performs up to 1.7 times faster than Xserve G5 running MySQL.
Xserve
Quad 3.0GHz Xeon
Xserve G5
Dual 2.3GHz G5
1.7x
Baseline
Testing conducted by Apple in October 2006 using preproduction quad 3.0GHz Xeon-based Xserve units; Xserve G5 systems were shipping units.
Results are based on the Super Smack 1.1 benchmark (vegan.net/tony/supersmack), with clients making a total of 1 million simple SELECT queries.
Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of Xserve.