A recent report by market research firm IDC gives Apple high marks for its efforts in the Enterprise storage and server markets. While Apple is best known for its iPod and Macintosh product lines, IDC analysts say the competition is taking interest in what Apple is doing in the Enterprise market, as well.
Oh where oh where have the inroads gone, oh where oh where can they be?
No stats listed in this article. Insert expletive here.
I like Apple, I like the Xserv and Xraid as well.
Apple has a lot to learn about the “enterprise” market.
Their Xserve doesn’t even have dual redundant power supplies. The Xraid does but so what if your server tanks? Every other new rack mount server in our data center has dual power supplies plugged into different PDU’s. The Xserve case is not that full; with some reengineering it could no doubt hold another power supply. While the Xserve looks nice from front the quality of the case and rails doesn’t even compare well to a cheap Dell.
Then there is the bizare way is OS X is case insensitive by default; the only other case insensitive UNIX I remember is an ancient one IBM had for its 370 mainframe. When Apple OS 9 to OS X they should have gone full-bore to case-sensitivity because doing so would not cause any name collisions. Now Apple has a case sensitive option for filesystems but it seems buggy as heck and of course now the danger exists of name collisions copying data from case sensitive to case insensitive filesystems.
Our Xserve got hosed up so badly that nobody could log on. After dealing with support it turned out that the problem was caused by root changing their password using the ‘passwd’ command rather than going through the GUI. If the passwd command is so dangerous Apple should either fix it or remove it all together! Support went on to say that with few exceptions everything should be done through the GUI and that UNIX or Linux experience is a liability because users see familiar commands and assume they know how to do things when in fact what they are doing is incorrect.
Heh, I personally like the fact that two people can’t use the server admin tools on the same server at the same time without destroying it. Not sure what the specifics are with this rule, but last time Apple came by and talked to us about 10.4 server, the tech was pretty clear that doing so would completely break it and we shoulden’t attempt it.
The biggest draw back to Apple is that their premium warranty support with 4 hour response time is limited to xServes. As a business that owns several Power Macs that operating is mission critical roles, I do wish our Apple desktops could get the same level of support as i can purchase for our Dell or other wintel workstations.
I also wish Apple’s solution after 7 clean installs was not “oh lets do another clean install to be sure”. After throwing a fit and them finally agreeing to replace the motherboard the problem was fixed. I shouldn’t have to go through that, and with my wintel boxes I do not.
If Apple resolves its warranty problems, then, and only then will I give them any additional consideration for an company wide solution.
Their Xserve doesn’t even have dual redundant power supplies. The Xraid does but so what if your server tanks? Every other new rack mount server in our data center has dual power supplies plugged into different PDU’s. The Xserve case is not that full; with some reengineering it could no doubt hold another power supply. While the Xserve looks nice from front the quality of the case and rails doesn’t even compare well to a cheap Dell.
Our IBM x335s don’t have redundant power supplies either. Who cares? In a web farm with 30 servers, if one tanks so what. We will have another power supply shipped overnight and use 29 servers for the time being.
If Apple were to ship an 8 way heavy duty server designed for DB clusters and it only had 1 power supply, then I would worry.
Just think, we’ll soon be able to hook iPods together into clusters. Now we can listen to tunes while doing some climate modeling. Lookout Beowulf.
I’ll start with saying that I actually do appreciate Apple as a company, and I really wish to see them move heavily into the business world. With OSX and all the fun things they are up to, they will continue to offer a great number of innovations to the industry.
On that note, hear are a few things that are limiting Apple’s acceptance into the enterprise business world.
1. Their level of technical support is not comparable with other vendors. You can get warranties on desktops and notebooks (enterprise-grade support warranties). You also really need to establish a good relationship with a local apple support company in order to get that – and it will cost you much more than other vendors.
2. They still have the consumer market mindset, even with their other products. Like an earlier poster mentioned, they won’t just replace a component – you almost have to beg them to help you.
3. Their secrecy just bugs the life out of me. Why can’t I get a release schedule for the next 5 dot releases of OSX? Why does everything have to be a secret. Business people can’t make decisions about what technology they will use if they can’t see where the technology is going. Also, if you’ve ever filed a bug report with them, and then asked when they think it will be fixed (after they have assessed that indeed it is a bug) you know that you get a nice litte e-mail saying that it is not their policy to publish future release schedules. That’s nice, but when you have technology that depends on that bugfix, it is a little irritating.
4. They don’t offer enterprise-grade backward compatibility. Why do you have to upgrade to OSX 10.4 to get Java 1.5? This tactic will makes consumers upgrade, but makes IT people switch to a different platform.
I’m hoping that they become much more business-friendly. I think they have a shot, but they have a long way to go to make IT people really feel that they are safe with Apple.
Download SUN Java on OS X and run it. Of course you won’t get the ability to embed Java inside Cocoa Apps or OS X’s implementation of Java but I doubt you want that if you are just interested in vanilla Java.
Could you provide a link – I couldn’t seem to find an OSX download on java.sun.com.