Computer, Inc. User's Manual Xserve G5

Affordable, Scalable Storage

Exponential growth in the creation and distribution of digital content is driving the

need for high-capacity storage in business and education. Large databases, digital

video footage, immense scientific data sets, and uncompressed audio all place

enormous demands on server storage resources.

Xserve G5 addresses these growing requirements by providing up to 750GB of afford-

able internal storage capacity.

With each Apple Drive Module on an independent

Serial ATA (SATA) drive channel and connected to a high-speed I/O system, the Xserve

storage subsystem scales without compromising performance. This unique architecture

delivers the best balance of performance, reliability, capacity, and price.

Internal storage comparison

Server Apple Dell IBM Sun

Xserve G5 PowerEdge 1750 eServer x335 Sun Fire V60x

Maximum internal 750GB 438GB 292GB 219GB

storage capacity (three 250GB drives) (three 146GB drives) (two 146GB drives) (three 73GB drives)

Onboard disk controller Three independent Ultra320 SCSI Ultra320 SCSI Ultra320 SCSI

for internal drives SATA

Hot-plug drives Yes Yes Yes No

Cost of additional $499 $699 $899 $500

drives* (250GB) (146GB) (146GB) (73GB)

Cost per GB $2.00 $4.79 $6.16 $6.85

* Based on suggested retail prices published on manufacturers’ websites as of December 21, 2003.

Xserve G5 offers affordable internal storage that scales to nearly twice the capacity of most other

1U servers on the market.

SATA Drive Technology

Xserve G5 features sophisticated 150MB/s SATA drive controllers, each with a dedicated

SATA bus to a single Apple Drive Module. In the original Xserve—and before Serial

ATA became available—Apple pioneered a point-to-point storage architecture using

Parallel ATA. This innovative design eliminated the single-threaded operation of the

typical ATA master/slave configuration and delivered superior performance at a much

lower cost than that of SCSI-based systems.

Xserve G5 advances to a SATA-based storage subsystem that provides the same multi-

threaded system operation. Multithreading enables the system to send commands to

multiple drives at once for the fastest possible throughput. An independent drive

architecture also isolates the drives electrically, preventing a single drive failure from

causing unavailability or performance degradation of the surviving drives—a common

problem with multidrive SCSI implementations.

Technology Overview

Xserve G5

Up to 750GB of storage

Each Xserve G5 has three drive bays for

up to three hot-plug Apple Drive Modules.