So, I've switched to using OS X as my primary desktop operating system since about July of last year. It was a fairly succesful transition, and I'm happy with the lack of daily updates for security reasons, as it is getting ridiculous on the Windows side. The Aqua interface isn't totally to my taste, but it's definitely easier to use than getting something like KDE functional on a laptop using FreeBSD. So I consider it a good compromise.
Now Apple has come out with a new G5 XServe, and I'm finding some parts of it intriguing.
We've converted from NT 4.0 to FreeBSD in the pas two years, and have been generally happy with the stability and the availability of software tools and applications. I even like the ports system.
But the thing that caught my attention was the Netboot feature, when combined with the XRaid. The idea of storing our MySQL databases on the XRaid, along with our mail directories and user home direstories, and then storing operating system images that can be run on standard servers like the Cluster Node XServe. This strikes me as an appealing setup.
Having a Netboot volume that defines a mail server would be extremely useful to help kill a single point of failure aspect of network architecture. Having a hot spare server waiting to boot off of a Raid protected Netboot image for different servers(database, mail, web server, whatever) would make life a lot easier for response times("It's not working? Heat up the spare, using the fill-in-the-blank image, and we'll look at it when we get a chance").
I'm certain that I could get this working with off the shelf parts and FreeBSD, but the fact is that the XRaid and the XServes just aren't that expensive.
So, yeah, you could say intrigued.
Posted by dglynn at January 13, 2004 01:17 AM