Specifications

20
Technology Overview
Xserve
Internal graphics
Administrators often need a quick way to plug in a display and access their servers.
Xserve now offers built-in graphics as standard, no longer requiring the addition of a
card that takes up a valuable expansion slot. The built-in graphics controller provides
64MB of RAM with a mini-DVI output and supports—over DVI—up to a 23-inch Apple
Cinema HD Display. A mini-DVI to VGA adapter is included for connection to standard
VGA devices and KVM (keyboard-video-mouse) switches.
Additional connectivity
Xserve offers industry-standard interfaces for a range of connecting I/O devices:
•
Dual FireWire 800 ports. Two FireWire 800 ports on the back panel and one FireWire
400 port on the front panel connect to high-bandwidth FireWire (IEEE 1394) devices,
such as storage devices and audio and video input devices. In addition, TCP/IP over
FireWire can be used to create small clusters or an IP failover back-channel network,
while FireWire target disk mode allows easy data migration and cloning of system
configurations.
• DB-9 serial port. An industry-standard 9-pin serial port allows for system access
through a serial console session.
• Two USB 2.0 ports.
USB ports on the back panel connect to keyboards, mice,
speakers, and other industry-standard peripheral devices.
•
Optical drive. For software installation and recovery, a slot-loading 24x Combo drive
(DVD-ROM/CD-RW) comes standard on server configurations. An optional 8x double-
layer-burning SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) is also available, permitting
data archival and backup to DVD-R and DVD+R DL media.
Reliability Built In
From the 24/7-rated 3Gb/s Serial ATA drives, to the high-availability memory features, to
the Apple quality workmanship and design throughout, Xserve is built from the ground
up for reliability and long life. And make no mistake, those are crucial qualities in a
server, because if the server goes down, so could the whole business or organization.
Dual power supplies
Hot-swappable and load-sharing, the redundant power supply option for Xserve
provides greatly enhanced reliability. The power supplies are also easily serviceable
in case of failure.
Memory RAS features
Advanced error correction features include ECC with on-demand scrubbing, CRC
data and command protection with automatic translation retry, Single Device Data
Correction (SDDC) supporting DRAM device failure correction, and embedded
diagnostics.
Integrated software RAID
With powerful Mac OS X Server software, Xserve offers industry-leading integration
of built-in software RAID to protect data on the internal hard drives, supporting such
features as mirroring, booting off of the mirror, online rebuilding of the mirror, and
more. Alternatively, use of Apple Xserve RAID provides high-throughput connectivity
to external mass storage at a very competitive cost per gigabyte.