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In-Depth with Mac OS X Lion Serverby Andrew Cunningham on 8/2/2011 8:00 AM EST
77 Comments
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Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkYour Twitter was right, this really is endless Reply
CharonPDX - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkIt was that pesky loop that started on page 23 that circled you back to page 8. By the time you'd read page 23, you'd forgotten what was on page 8, so you didn't notice you were in a loop until you were at what you thought was page 157... Reply
B3an - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkVery in depth article... but i feel you've wasted time on this. No one in there right mind would use OSX as a server. Apart from Apple fanboys that choose an inferior product over better alternatives because it has an Apple logo, but i emphasize the words "right mind". Reply
FATCamaro - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkFor enterprise work, or a Windows-only network this is certainly true. For SMB, or even 500 mac/mixed users I think it could work if you can provide some glue to handle fail-over.
Windows server is better for Office for sure as is Linux for web & applications. Reply
Spivonious - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkI can run a web server on the client version of Windows. It's just not installed by default. Reply
mino - Saturday, August 06, 2011 - linkHint: for how many users/connections ....
If it was THAT simple there would be no Web Edition, mind you. Reply
AlBanting - Friday, August 19, 2011 - linkSame thing for client version of Mac OS X. I've done this for years. Reply
KPOM - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkTrue, for an enterprise user. However, a small business or tech-savvy home user trying to manage multiple Windows PCs, Macs, and iOS devices might well be tempted by the $50 price tag.
If should be obvious by the price drop and the discontinuation of the XServe that Apple no longer intends to compete with Windows Server or Linux in the enterprise market. They are a consumer-oriented company, and released a server OS intended for a consumer market. Reply
zorxd - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkTech-savvy home user will run a free linux distro for a server. Plus it will work on any hardware, not only on a Mac. Many use older PCs as servers.
Also the Mac Pro is too expensive and the Mac Mini can't even have 3.5" drives which mean that it is a bad solution for a file server. Reply
richardr - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkActually, I have a real use case, though it may be a bit specialised for your tastes... non-computing departments of universities are full of people with underused desktops running Word, but also have other people doing analyses that take ages to run on their machines. Making them all Macs (you'll never persuade them to use linux) and wiring them up with xgrid and OSX Server is a pretty pain-free way of running my analyses on their machines without too much disruption to their lives... Reply
ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkGiven the shift in corporate policy from being Blackberry focused to adopting other smartphone platforms including iOS, I think most CTOs would take a look at OS X Server if only for the easier iOS device management features. I don't really see it replacing existing Windows servers though, particularly since Apple doesn't sell dedicated server class hardware anymore. Reply
quakerotis - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkThis is simply not true. OS X Server has been for us a very good performer, both in stability and ease of use. B3an, you must be speaking anecdotally because I am not a fanboy. There are many server technologies to choose from. this is one of the better ones. Reply
diskrete - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkAs an IT manager for a small company, I would definitely use Lion Server to manage Macs and iPhones.
It in no way replaces existing Windows/Linux infrastructure. But recycling a Mac mini to use for managing Apple devices? Absolutely. It's worth it just for the ability to create machine-based 802.1X profiles.
IT today is not about standardizing on one platform, it's about using the right tool for the job. Reply
sligett - Thursday, August 04, 2011 - linkUnix isn't a server platform anyone in their right mind would use?
There are thousands upon thousands of small and medium businesses as well as schools that are hostage to expensive windows "experts" that have put a Windows server in their business. The client can't do a thing with the server without the expensive help of the expert. You don't see that as a viable market?
So many people speak out on the Internet as though "I can't use this" is equivalent to "no one can use this". Reply
erple2 - Thursday, August 04, 2011 - linkTo be fair, any infrastructure that's put in place by an "expert" tends to continue to have to be maintained by another expensive expert. Non-techies have problems with Macs just as much as non-techies have problems with Linux, or Windows machines.
BTW, I've found that the mac "experts" that have put a mac server in their business are also very expensive to hire back for help.
There are some very very nice manageability features that OSX Server buys you that aren't all that simple to implement by relative novices in other environments... Reply
cwatt - Monday, September 26, 2011 - linkHa ha, you are really ignorant! I am currently rolling this out to a big organization and this article is a really big help.. BTW ... those inferior products are actually extremely good quality and very easily managed and a lot more secure than other platforms... You should not let your opinion get in the way of your judgment, you should make the best decision based on the environment not because you are a fanboy or you randomly hate really good products! Reply
blueeyesm - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkI have to agree that managing iOS devices using OS X Server is probably their only ace in the hole. The rest of what this offering serves can be replicated/managed better under Linux. That being said, if Apple wanted to be really smart, they'd help their community devise methods in which to enhance a shopping experience, or other interacive experiences with an iOS or tablet device.
That is, until cloud computing becomes the de facto standard and Apple ceases to offer a server or client to download, you just are expected to do everything via iTunes/iLife Cloud edition. Reply
badjohny - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkWith its drop in price, and ability to install on any mac, I would love to see apple take OSX server and shape it into a WHS for mac. It looks like all or many of those things are available in OSX server, but the ease and convenience of using a WHS is unreal. Push the Home server aspect of OSX server and really make a use for it in a standard home. itunes server edition, Apple TV media server, IOS update manager, Shared home calendars, email, and family based websites come to mind. These are all things that It can currently do, but they all need some "apple magic" to make them very powerful and at the same time very easy for anyone to setup. Apple could easy include a option in the setup of a mac to have it search your network for a server. If it finds one have it ask if you want to enable the features. They could even leverage the icloud system and have it linked by your itunes account. They all the data could sync through the icloud service. enter your apple ID and your client is setup to use your server instantly.
They could even make a personal iCloud options. Every picture/video you take have it saved over to the server also.
I understand that OSX server is a niche item in big business. Apple should admit defeat in enterprise setups and push server to a more person level. Have it compete with windows SBS and WHS but make it have the apple easy of use. They have a real product here, but like most home server options it seems to be more of a niche item. Reply
Ratman6161 - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkBasically Apple does not make or sell server grade hardware. Sure, if you look on their online store you will find a version of the Mac Pro that calls itself a server and comes with OSX Server installed. But there are a variety of things about it that make it not enterprise ready and more suited to small business or home servers. If Apple really wanted to be in the enterprise market then what they would absolutely have to do is to allow it to run as a virtual machine on all the major virtualization platforms. For example where I work we are a VMWare shop and no server software is coming in our door that will not run on VMWare Esx server.
Its my theory thought hat they have no intention or desire to compete in the enterprise server market. If they did, there would be no reason for a price drop as most businesses in that market place would not have blinked at the $499 price or even the $999 price - both are a drop in the bucket compared to all the other costs associated with a data center. No, the price drop to me definitely signals that its their intent to be in the small business and home server market. Reply
HMTK - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkYou're right, Apple does not have anything that could even remotely be called server hardware.
There have been rumors that Mac OS can run as a vm on vSphere 5 (if you're ok with the licensing). If true you could run it on real servers and real SANs and use nice features like high availability. The only show stopper is probably licensing but I would think that is VMware were taking the trouble of making OS X run on their hypervisor they would have a deal with Apple.
AFAIC Max OS X Server would be interesting only for managing iOS devices. Reply
HMTK - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkOK so you can definitely run a Mac OS X vm on vSphere 5 but only on Apple hardware. What a joke! Probably Apple idiocy rather than a technical limitation. Reply
Spazweasel - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkApple is a hardware company. OS/X and iOS exist to make hardware sales possible (thus the cost of development is included in the pricing for Apple hardware, something the Apple haters conveniently overlook) Allowing the running of OS/X on non-Apple hardware reduces Apple hardware sales, so they don't do it.
"Idiocy"? Yeah, sure, whatever. Reply
HMTK - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkNot allowing Mac OS to run under a hypervisor on non-Apple branded hardware won't help them either. Or do you think a halfway decent IT-department would put a desktop machine or a hard disk posing as a server in a data center? They'd rather pay a few 100 € more for a license if they could run it on ESXi/XenServer/Hyper-V and reliable hardware. Reply
Spazweasel - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkApple makes its money on the desktop, not the server room. I doubt it's worth the effort. OS/X in the server room is a niche product, and Apple know it; it's much more suited as a workgroup/small office server, and those environments do not have ESX or Xen installations.
Apple has no incentive to support OS/X in a VM, and plenty of reasons not to. Really, I don't see why this is a surprise. Reply
HMTK - Thursday, August 04, 2011 - linkI'm not saying it's a big surprise, I'm saying it's stupid. why not make good manegement tools for their iOS available in a way that companies can integrate better in their infrastructure?
You might be surprised as to how many small shops are going the virtualization route. Even if you have only a single server it makes sense in the long run when the time comes to replace the hardware. Just import the VM on the hypervisor on the new hardware and you're done. Reply
GotThumbs - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkThis is an interesting article and I enjoyed the depth of detail. As a builder of my own systems for years, does the use of this software bind you to using only a ready built Apple system? It seems Apple is slowly trying to create a close proprietary system where you have to use apple hardware and apple software. I know their are hackintosh systems but it seems its still going to be quite a bit of effort and so far seems to be a waste of time for me. As the article mentions, there are lots of alternatives available. Apples MO seems to be offering zero options for using outside sources. Apple consumers are being channeled to Itunes and the Mac App Store for all purchases. I'm personally not a fan of that trend and have no intentions of bowing down to that kind of control. I can see where the general consumer who has very little technical knowledge is quite accepting of Apples controls as its a very simple and somewhat brainless system packaged in a slick looking package. Reply
GrizzledYoungMan - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkOr is it still something we're all going to pretend works, when it very clearly doesn't out in the real world (If it worked, why would DAVE exist)? I'm referring here to the myriad of permissions issues and oodles of useless garbage sidecar files that pop up after a few days of operation in a mixed environment.
Haven't read the article. Probably won't. Sorry. Apple is a joke at anything that designing anything that doesn't fit in your pocket/surrogate vagina of choice.
I get this feeling, deep in my angry muscle, every time some imbecile waves around his iThing, raving about Apple's genius, while I'm thinking about all the time that has been wasted trying to get OS X desktop clients to do things that have worked out in the real world for years now. Reply
blueeyesm - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkNot in Lion, as Samba moved to GPL3 licensing.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/03/23/insi... Reply
GrizzledYoungMan - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkYou know what's wild? I should actually be excited they're moving to a new standard - the NAS' I often recommend to clients support SMB2, and see useful performance gains from it.
But then I read "Windows networking software developed by Apple" and my heart sinks. Realistically, what are the odds this is going to work?
Honestly, I don't really blame the design teams over there so much as a closed corporate culture that both ignores the feedback of their customers and denies any complaints exist.
They're really missing out on the sorts of improvements that most big software developers make using the information gathered during large, open betas and the like. Reply
repoman27 - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkAs the article you linked to points out, since version 10.2 Mac OS X has shipped with Samba, an open-source, reverse engineered version of SMB 1.0. With Lion, Apple dropped Samba and added native support for SMB2 while maintaining the ability to connect with SMB 1.0 machines as long as they use UNICODE and extended security. This means Mac OS X 10.7 can no longer connect out of the box with some SMB 1.0 or Samba machines (which it had done for the last 9 years), but it does have full support for SMB2.
As for GrizzledYoungMan's "oodles of useless garbage sidecar files," it's not like Mac users have any use for a thumbs.db file either. Just hide the metadata files, or don't allow write permissions on the folder if you don't want to see that kind of stuff, but these types of files are most likely only going to become more prevalent as time goes by. Reply
GrizzledYoungMan - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkI probably should have toned down my sarcasm a bit, but my point is that while yes, Apple said they support SMB since 10.2, it just plain old doesn't work right.
Google Thursby DAVE to see what I mean. Reply
repoman27 - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkI'm familiar with DAVE, and you're right that obviously much is to be desired with Apple's SMB implementation if there is still an aftermarket product that costs more than the OS itself just to fix this particular issue.
I kinda feel like more of the problem has to do with Mac OS X's lack of native support for NTFS though, rather than SMB actually malfunctioning.
I chuckle that while you're thinking about "all the time that has been wasted trying to get OS X desktop clients to do things that have worked out in the real world for years now," I'm thinking about how much time I've wasted trying to get Windows Home versions to do things that Microsoft has artificially prevented them from doing so that they could sell customers an "upgrade". For instance, try setting up file sharing with user-level passwords and NTFS permissions on a network with Windows XP Home and Widows 7 Home Premium machines... Reply
GrizzledYoungMan - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkYou'll get no argument from me that Windows' tiered pricing is a bummer. Up-selling is sleazy.
But overall, I'd say that Windows actually represents a better value if you make the right upgrade choices (ie, XP straight to 7). For the price of a few of Apple's annual updates, you get something that lasts a few years longer, does a lot more, and puts you through the OS-version-transition rumpus less frequently.
While I can understand why the press loves the frequency of OS X revisions, I don't see it as a good thing for the user (and certainly not my own personal experience). Upgrading your OS is a pain, and to do it every year - lest you suffer the consequences of running a two year old, unsupported version of OS X - is a burden. And as I mentioned, the end result of this accelerated schedule is that the end users become the beta testers.
No wonder they're getting out of the desktop business. They can't handle anything much more complicated than a mobile phone OS. Reply
repoman27 - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkSince version 10.3, Mac OS X has been on a major revision update schedule that is much closer to once every 2 years (Leopard actually came 2.5 years after Tiger). In the early days of Mac OS X there were some teething issues that resulted in a more rapid release cycle, but I also seem to recall Microsoft releasing Windows 98, 98SE, ME, and 2000 in rather quick succession.
Mac users are also free to skip every other version. Not to mention that upgrade pricing for Mac OS is way cheaper than Windows when you realize that you're getting the full-feature client version with a far more liberal license scheme and no activation based copy protection for $30. How much would it cost to legitimately upgrade every machine that you own or control from Windows Vista Home Basic 32-bit OEM to Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit?
Apple released updates for Tiger for more than 3 years after it was discontinued. I guess if they had a stubborn enough install base they would be forced to continue support for a 9 year-old version of their OS as well.
What does a client version of Windows itself do that Mac OS does not, aside from allowing playback of Blu-ray discs?
If you've ever bought a retail Windows machine, you probably know that out of the box, under normal usage, the thing will be all but unusable in less than 18 months time, forcing you to buy another cheap POS Windows machine, or to perform a clean install of your OS. I love sacrificing 16% of a new system's performance to anti-virus software right off the bat, too. Reply
RubberJ - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkMy system has been running Win7 since RTM and hasn't slowed.
And does Antivirus really take 16% of your system performance or are you just talking out your arse?
Just as i thought...mac fanboy alert... Reply
repoman27 - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkYeah, as soon as I posted that last comment I realized I had crossed the line into religious war territory.
My point about crappy system performance and having to reinstall the OS was regarding the way retail PC's come preconfigured, and what the typical end-user then subjects them to, not your particular case. My personal Windows systems (I do actually use Windows on the daily) tend to work fine for years, but then again I also spend a lot of time building performance tuned system images. I also don't personally run antivirus software anymore, because I'm not a sucker.
As for that, I tend to refer more to the testing done by AV comparatives, and my own personal testing, but I certainly wasn't talking out my arse. 16% may indeed be hyperbole when talking about a new Sandy Bridge based system running Windows 7, but not at all on legacy equipment running XP or when running in a virtualized environment.
Anywho, my initial intent was merely to clarify various exaggerations or inaccuracies in this thread, but I guess I did end up painting myself as the fanboy with that previous rant. Reply
Wizzdo - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkAs a power user, developer, and servicer for Windows and OS X I can tell you quite simply that, relative to OS X, Windows is an expensive frustrating bag of hurt for a great many typical users. OS X comes with a fantastic suite of software tailored very well to work with the OS and the OS is in turn tuned very well to work with the Hardware. Updates (even Major ones) are painless and offer excellent value for the investment. They are generally highly looked forward to by most OS X users.
Anyone who claims Windows and a generic PC will likely serve the average user better simply does not have a clue. There really is little comparison now and OS X Lion just pushes the experience that much further ahead.
For much of my day I am forced to use Windows to develop SQL Server infrastructures. SQL Server is IMHO the best piece of software Microsoft has ever managed to make. However, my blood pressure drops considerably when I get to boot back into OS X where I can get some creative work done in a responsive pleasing modern environment that does not feel like a thinly veiled version of DOS.
Apple gets it right and that is why they are the revered technology leader in the industry right now.
Timemachine alone is worth the price of admission for anyone who values there work and wants effortless trustworthy backup and retrieval of it. Watch MS scramble to get this into their next OS just like so many other features. Apple didn't invent them all but knows how to make them work the way they should. Reply
GrizzledYoungMan - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkI would just like to point out that Wizzdo lives in a universe in which Windows 7 is a thinly veiled version of DOS, and Timemachine is a novel, useful feature.
Sigh. OS X users. Reply
ex2bot - Friday, August 05, 2011 - linkActually, Time Machine IS a useful feature. Is it "novel"? It is novel in the sense that it is drop-dead simple. You plug in an external drive and click the 'Yes' button. Then as long as it is attached it makes complete + sequential backups. I use it on my Macs. I also clone periodically. Well, I don't clone. My drives do.
The backup review interface works well, too. It's basically a specialized Finder window. I admit the star field is . . . interesting.
GrizzledYoungMan, has Time Machine not been useful for you? What happened when you used it? It's worked for me on multiple machines. Backing up is useful because hard drives fail eventually. Even hard drives attached to Windows PCs.
And Windows 7 *is* a thinly veiled version of DOS. See, Windows just a shell that sits on DOS. . . Nahhh! I'm just kidding ya. I know it's son of NT (or grandson maybe).
Positronic Mac Fanbot ("Cannot harm humans" is just a guideline, I believe.) Reply
justinf79 - Friday, August 05, 2011 - linkWay to show your ignorance there buddy...
Windows, the security/virus nightmare where you're bombarded by OS security patches daily gets old fast. And quite frankly OS X is more powerful AND simpler. Windows has always been garbage. Reply
ex2bot - Friday, August 05, 2011 - linkUpgrading OS X is not much of a pain, as Repo says. Plus, it's practical to skip at least every other upgrade. So, upgrading every four years (2 + 2) at $60 isn't a big deal and the improvements are worth it.
I especially appreciate Expose', Time Machine, Spotlight, and Quick Look and use them regularly And every Mac user has benefitted from Quartz GL (uses 3d graphics card to speed up screen draws).. There have been myriad "invisible" or subtle improvements as well. See Apple's "Mac OS X" section for details.
Four years between OS upgrades is not bad, as I said. Longhorn was supposed to come out about 4 or 5 years after XP. Microsoft just had eyes bigger than its stomach and it was delayed. But Windows 7 was worth the wait. Especially features like the display compositor + aesthetically pleasing UI + improved security (and no more yellow speech bubbles popping up all the time)
Automated System Process Reply
ex2bot - Friday, August 05, 2011 - linkBTW, Expose's successor is called "Mission Control." Reply
Sahrin - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linka reduction in advertising, if you guys are going to do all these paid reviews for Apple. Reply
Johnmcl7 - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkIt's getting a bit of a joke these days that anything with the Apple badge will get a news article, preview, in depth review the moment it's out dwarfing everything else which barely seems to get a look-in. I get that Anand likes Apple stuff and if I don't I should go elsewhere but I like the non-Apple reviews when they do occasionally get published.
John Reply
ex2bot - Friday, August 05, 2011 - linkIt's no joke. Check Anand's mailbox some time*.
*Crazies, please don't mess with his mailbox. Reply
ex2bot - Friday, August 05, 2011 - linkI know for a fact that Apple employees stuff money into Anand's mailbox*. Lots and lots of money. They use $20s and $50s straight from Jobs' car, who burns them to light his cigs.
Currency Calculating Mac Fanbot
* Anand, I don't really believe this. I was kidding, as I'm sure you've figured out. Actually, I'm sure they are $100s, not $20s and $50s. After all, he's a Billionaire. Reply
the_engineer - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkThanks for this great in-depth look at Lion Servers new & continued functionality, I learned a lot reading this. However, I'm still very confused at where XSAN fits into the picture. As a storage power-user I've used software Linux raid, semi-hardware windows raid (Intel, Highpoint), and I've lately dabbled into ZFS because it seems like it's really got everything I could ever want as far as straight storage capabilities are concerned (I'm running a raidz6 with 6 750GB drives currently running on Nexenta). I'd really like to put Lion Server on a mac and install a generic SATA card and add 6 3TB hard drives and do a great big raid5 in a mac pro, but am very confused as to whether or not this will work. I was very hopeful that Lion Server would integrate 'software' RAID5 or similar functionality, but it's not clear anywhere whether it does this or not. Simply put, Do I still need to buy a dedicated raid5 card to have a redundant array of inexpensive disks on a mac or am I missing something still?
-Looking for a great user experience AND a ton of redundant storage Reply
HMTK - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkWhy not set up a NAS with iSCSI or NFS ? Reply
the_engineer - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkLONG story short, geting a deidciated NAS box means spending more money than ought to be necessary at this point (I have an i7 desktop and a core2 desktop, both capable of running Lion, Windows, FreeBSD, you name it... Just fine, as well as plenty of vanilla SATA ports & cards available). I'm Trying to weigh all purely software options available to me, with ZFS/BSD sitting on top of the heap for storage features but OSX sitting on top of the heap from a usability standpoint. The longer I look at it the more likely I am to end up running one huge 20-drive ZFS based NAS under FreeBSD but was trying to avoid getting to this point. Reply
HMTK - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkIf you put it on the network you can access it with all decent OS's. I've got a little HP mini proliant just for that. Reply
the_engineer - Thursday, August 04, 2011 - linkIndeed, and that's the plan, assuming nothing else I like more comes along. I was really sort of tantalized by the possibility of software RAID in OSX, and still haven't been able to get a straight answer on it. Currently it is looking like it's a no go. Reply
tff - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkAs a home user, I've been frustrated by the inability to have two users edit a shared calendar in OS X/iOS without using 3rd party software.
How would it differ using Lion server to accomplish this rather than Lion and iOS 5 clients using iCloud?
Typical Mac home user- iPhones, iPads, Mac laptops. Reply
Omegabet - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkYou can install server.app on a client. Just copy the app over from the server. The first time you launch it, choose connect to a server. It will then run server.app from your client. Otherwise it will upgrade lion to the server version. This was recommended in the apple documentation (can't remember where though). Reply
qiankun - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkOne instance I found frustrating is that non-HSF+ volumes like NTFS and exFat cannot be accessed from other computers using SMB or AFP. You can add the volume to the file sharing list, pick whatever protocol you like, but when you try to access it you'll get an error. Same thing applies to the bootcamp partition.
I like to use NTFS or exFat on external drives, for simple fact that whenever needed you can simply disconnect them from the mac server and plug into a PC. I know there are software that allows reading HSF+ partitions on windows, but it's not installed everywhere, very unlikely if you want to use the drive on a random computer you or your friend uses. Reply
damianrobertjones - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkWindows Home Server. That's all I have to add. Reply
justinf79 - Friday, August 05, 2011 - linkWHS isn't even in the same league... Reply
rs2 - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkI've used a number of different wiki solutions, and the one included on OS X Server is a toy compared to most other popular wikis. There's just no comparison between the OS X wiki and something like Confluence or MediaWiki. Reply
gamoniac - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkAt first glance, this looks impressive, given the price tag and the myriad of features provided. However, the author should note the huge maintenance costs of this at best rudimentary product. Anyone who has used Apache or IIS 7 knows the Lion web server is years away from catching up.
What good is a cheap product if you have to to spend, say, 40 hours, trying to get something to work. The TCO is too high even at $10/hour, and even for home users. Reply
gamoniac - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkPS: Good article nonetheless. Thank you AT. Keep them coming! Reply
repoman27 - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkWhat's good about a cheap product with a myriad of features is that if even one or two work as advertised out of the box, it was worth it. If not, you're only out $50. I configured Snow Leopard Client on a MacBook Pro to work as a NetBoot / NetRestore server because I happened to find that functionality useful, and although it was trivial to do so, I'm perfectly inclined to shell out the $50 for Lion Server going forward rather than monkey around with another client version.
In general, you're right though, it's stupid to cheap out on a capital expenditure and then spend an order of magnitude more trying to get someone who knows what they're doing to make it work.
Really, though, who doesn't spend at least 40 hours setting up a new server for the first time? Reply
Wizzdo - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkLion's web server IS Apache. LOL. Reply
jigglywiggly - Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - linkI am too much of an elitist fag to succumb to this.
I just installed my Debian GUI-less server today to replace my o'll ubuntu 10.04 LTS GUI server, got everyhting setup, mysql, apache, php, samba settings, everything gud to go with only 100 megs of ram usage.
Sure it took much longer to setup, but I am an elitist fag Reply
don_k - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkSince when is netboot unique to OSX server? Last I checked all *nix variants have had that ability for decades.
But really, organisations concerned about the sticker price on their server software are not going to go get an apple 'server' for $1k when they can download an iso in 5min and get going are they?
Not to mention the complete lack of necessary system tools (archiving, compiing especially) without installing macports or something.
Call it like it is - 1k to manage all those damn pads and phones everyone in the company demands they are able to access the company intranet. Reply
johnbouy - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkTime Machine took a big step backwards with Lion Server. In Snow Leopard Server you could allow time machine backups on individual share points. This allows you to partition a disk and set up individual partitions for specific Time Machine backups. I use this to control how much disk space is allocated for a backup. In Lion you get to nominate one share point/partition as the Time Machine backup storage point. Hence any client that backs up to the server uses the same disk space. A real step backwards!
Another issue is that Server.app rewets .config files when started up so you potentially lose any changes you were forced to make due to the lousy Lion Web service interface. Reply
digitalzombie - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkI like the idea but still... I wouldn't do it. Apparently they got desperate enough to offer it for 50 bucks. Good job for noticing that no one give a damn since Linux is free and both Linux and Window is established already. I still wouldn't give em my money when they tried to charge in the past an arm and a leg. Who the hell do they think they're going fool? The platform isn't the most active for server development tools. Linux got cloud all up in there and it's actively evolving in many area especially server. Don't even try to bring out that pathetic iCloud. It's not open so nothing is going to back that crap other than Apple, openstack have 50 vendors, big companies, backing that project up compare to iCloud. Apple probably won't ever be able to compete in the server sector but they can leverage their UI and simplicity for their user base, such as the gui sys admin tools described in this articles. They should just stick with consumer base products, trying to compete in the server space market is going to kill em. Reply
matthi - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkOn page 4 of this review, it says ".. our next entries are Accounts and Stats under the Status heading". 'Accounts' should be replaced with 'Alerts'. Reply
slayernine - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkIf only this was a review of Windows Server it might be useful. I have never met a fellow tech person/geek who uses any version of Apple Server products. (aside from one customer about 3 years ago who was curious about them).
It is just the simple facts that apple products are know for a lack of an ability to upgrade, locked to features that Apple thinks you should have and a lack of price efficiency. Windows and Linux offer far superior server products that will run on pretty much any hardware that suits your needs and the only reason I can see there being a point to review this product is due to Apple padding your pockets. Reply
Schafdog - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkI know that it seems like Apple (or Steve) has lost faith in the PC as a hub, but I would really love seeing a iTunes Server that multiple users can control using iOS devices playing on Airplay or iOS device itself.
Some NAS is now getting this features, so I might drop the OS X Server for one of those instead. Reply
sodi - Wednesday, August 03, 2011 - linkWhat kind of crazy organization would use a Lion Server? At works, standard is a necessity. A Lion Server is just oddball. Reply
Oscarcharliezulu - Thursday, August 04, 2011 - linkThis seems a bit like OSX Server Lite and Easy rather than a true upgrade to Snow Leopard Server. I wasPthinking of converting an older 'mini to Lion Server (to serve a small business which has MBPs and iMacs, but now I think getting a copy of Snow Leopard Server would be better if I could somehow get it cheap (yet legal). Reply
jedimed - Thursday, August 04, 2011 - linkDoes anyone know if Lion Server supports any DLNA media streaming? Reply
jay2901 - Saturday, August 06, 2011 - linksorry if this has been answered already...but if you aren't interested in legacy nt domain controller functionality, can you join a windows 7 pc to lion server's open directory? would love to use this in a mixed (50-50) environment with mac/pcs without needing active directory. Reply
ATOmega - Monday, August 08, 2011 - linkSuch a limiting selection of hardware and functionality.
Running a server, it makes more sense to take advantage of the strong updates and packages in Debian/Ubuntu and just run with that.
I mean, if you're crazy about the Apple hardware, go nuts! But it's clear what Apple really does with server is integrate a handful of half baked UIs with otherwise free software packages. Calling it a "server edition" changes little from an existential perspective.
I'll never understand the appeal of paying up to 3x more to get the same if not less... Reply
tumme_totte - Tuesday, August 09, 2011 - linkAndrew, you say that Windows computers can't join the OD since a Lion OD Master can't be Primary Domain Master for Windows. But in the documentation Apple says something else:
Can this be verified? Windows 7 machines can't be joined to Leopard Server (neither Server 2008) and I was hoping Lion would solve this. Reply
Te-Moz - Sunday, August 14, 2011 - linkAndrew, you can set up device management with a self signed SSL certificate.
Obviously it's 'nicer' to have one that's authority signed, but for us, we just need Lion server to control our Macs and iPads, push updates and provide some shared storage. (Educational setting)
Great article, and if you wanted to do one on setting up a golden triangle with Lion Server OD and Win AD, then I'm sure a lot of folk would fine that really helpful also. ;) Reply
reese637 - Saturday, December 24, 2011 - linkHi all. I'm a young tech enthusiast who likes to get his hands dirty in networks and servers and what not. As of now, I've been running our home network with two Time Capsule routers (acting as access points, web servers, backup drives, and file sharing), and many mac desktops and laptops (I believe four MacBooks and two iMacs). For a while now, I've been interested in upgrading to the Server edition of OSX, but I was afraid that it had too many requirements such as xserves, server domains, etc. Now that Lion Server seems to be a bit more consumer friendly and a lot cheaper, I was seriously thinking in upgrading. Would any of you please be able to let me know if there is anything else I need to buy/do in order for OSX Lion Server to actually work in my home? Thank you. Reply
Ron Blatto - Thursday, February 02, 2012 - linkI'm new to using any kind of server software and your guide is exactly what I was looking for. Reply


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OCZ's Fastest SSD, The IBIS and HSDL Interface Reviewedby Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/29/2010 12:01 AM EST
74 Comments
Back to Article
punjabiplaya - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkIf I understood this correctly, OCZ is just using PCIe signaling over a SAS cable (with accompanying card to demux and pass on to the PCIe lanes)? That's ingenious. Reply
davecason - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkThis method also makes it easy to port it to a laptop interface through an express card socket. Reply
vol7ron - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkIsn't that what PCIe RAID controllers do (minus the SAS cable)? Reply
TinyTeeth - Saturday, October 02, 2010 - linkI'm pretty sure they communicate with regular SATA SSD drives through the SATA interface, whereas HSDL brings PCIe all the way to the SSD drive. This would be why IBIS supports much higher IOPS than previous PCIe SSD solutions like the Z-Drive (which were limited by SATA RAID). Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this. Reply
Ethaniel - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - link675 MB/s in sequential write? I just feel sad all of a sudden. SSDs are so forbidden for me right now, but this is a true monster. Maybe they'll make a more "down-to-Earth" version next time. Good stuff, anyway. Reply
vol7ron - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkIf only I could burn DVDs that fast. Reply
Lerianis - Saturday, October 02, 2010 - linkYou still burn DVD's? Hell, I stopped doing that a few months ago when I realized that 99% of the stuff I burned was really a 'watch-once and never again' thing and went out to get one of those 2.5" 1TB external hard drives.
Haven't burned another DVD since. Reply
rqle - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linktoo much proprietary peripherals, if i am going to use a PCIe card, I might as well just stick with a revodrive. pcie slots, proprietary slots connectors, proprietary cable, proprietary disk drive interface, blah. ill just stick with their own revodrive for now and wait for sata or sas controllers to pick up speed. Reply
jo-82 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkSAS cabels aren't that expensive these days, and the most companies who would by one of these use them today anyway.
And good luck waiting the next 3-5 years or so for SATA 12GB ;) Reply
vol7ron - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkGb, not GB Reply
clovis501 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkIf this innovation will eventually make it's way down to personal computer, it could simplify board design by allowing us to do away with the ever-changing SATA standard. A PCI Bus for all drives, and so much bandwidth than any bus-level bottleneck would be a thing of the past. One Bus to rule them all! Reply
LancerVI - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkOne bus to rule them all! That's a great point. One can hope. That would be great! Reply
AstroGuardian - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkI want AT to how me how long will it take to install Windows 7 from a fast USB stick, install all the biggest and IO hungry apps. Then i want to see how long will it take to start them all @ the same time having been put in the Start-up folder. Then i want to see how well would work 5 virtual machines doing some synthetic benchmarks (each one @ the same time) under windows 7.
Than i will have a clear view of how fast these SSD monsters are. Reply
Minion4Hire - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkWell aren't you demanding... =p Reply
Perisphetic - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link...or the past.
Well it's probably deja vu, sounds like it.
This is exactly what the MCA (Micro Channel architecture) bus did.back in the day. My IBM PS/2 35 SX's hard drive connected directly to this bus which was also the way the plug in cards connected... Reply
jonup - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - link"Even our upcoming server upgrade uses no less than fifty two SSDs across our entire network, and we're small beans in the grand scheme of things."
That's why the prices of SSD stay so high. The demand on the server market is way to high. Manufacturers do not need to fight for the mainstream consumer. Reply
mckirkus - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkI hate to feed trolls but this one is so easy to refute...
The uptake of SSDs in the enterprise ultimately makes them cheaper/faster for consumers. If demand increases so does production. Also enterprise users buy different drives, the tech from those fancy beasts typically ends up in consumer products.
The analogy is that big car manufacturers have race teams for bleeding edge tech. If Anand bought a bunch of track ready Ferraris it wouldn't make your Toyota Yaris more expensive.
Flash production will ramp up to meet demand. Econ 101. Reply
jonup - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkExcept that there is a limited supply of NAND Flash supply is limited while the demand for Ferraris does affect the demand for Yarises. Further, advances in technologies does not have anything to do with the shortage for Flash. Still further, supply for flash is very inelastic due to the high cost of entry and possibly limited supply of raw materials (read silicon).
p.s. Do yourself a favor, do not teach me economics. Reply
jonup - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkSorry for the bump, but in my original massage I simply expressed my supprise. I was not aware of the fact that SSD are so widely available/used in the commercial side. Reply
Ushio01 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkI believe the random write and read graphs have been mixed up. Reply
Ushio01 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkMy mistake. Reply
Kevin G - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkI have had a feeling that SSD's would quickly become limited by the SATA specification. Much of what OCZ is doing here isn't bad in principle. Though I have plenty of questions about it.
Can the drive controller fall back to SAS when plugged into a motherboard's SAS port? (Reading the article, I suspect a very strong 'no' answer.) Can the HSDL spec and drive RAID controller be adapted to support this?
What booting limitations exist? Is a RAID driver needed for the controller inside the IBIS drive?
Are the individual SSD controllers connected to the drive's internal RAID controller seen by the operating system or BIOS? (I'd guess 'no' but not explicitly stated.)
Is the RAID controller on the drive seen as a PCI-E device?
Is the single port host card seen by the system's operating system or is entirely passive? Is the four HDSL port card seen differently?
Does the SAS cabling handle PCI-E 3.0 signaling?
Is OCZ working on a native HDSL controller that'll convert PCI-E to ONFI? Would such a chip be seen as a regular old IDE device for easy OS installation and support for legacy systems? Would such a chip be able to support TRIM? Reply
disappointed1 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkI've read Anandtech for years and I had to register and comment for the first time on what a poor article this is - the worst on an otherwise impressive site.
"Answering the call many manufacturers have designed PCIe based SSDs that do away with SATA as a final drive interface. The designs can be as simple as a bunch of SATA based devices paired with a PCIe RAID controller on a single card, to native PCIe controllers."
-And IBIS is not one of them - if there is a bunch of NAND behind a SATA RAID controller, then the final drive interface is STILL SATA.
"Dubbed the High Speed Data Link (HSDL), OCZ's new interface delivers 2 - 4GB/s (that's right, gigabytes) of bi-directional bandwidth to a single SSD."
-WRONG, HSDL pipes 4 PCIe 1.1 lanes to a PCIe to PCI-X bridge chip (as per the RevoDrive), connected to a SiI 3124 PCI-X RAID controller, out to 4 RAID'ed SF-1200 drives. And PCIe x4 is 1000MB/s bi-directional, or 2000MB/s aggregate - not that it matters, since the IBIS SSDs aren't going to see that much bandwidth anyway - only the regular old 300MB/s any other SATA300 drive would see. This is nothing new; it's a RevoDrive on a cable. We can pull this out of the article, but you're covering it up with as much OCZ marketing as possible.
Worse, it's all connected through a proprietary interface instead of the PCI Express External Cabling, spec'd Febuary 2007 (http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/pciexpress/pc...
By your own admission, you have a black box that is more expensive and slower than a native PCIe x4 2.0, 4 drive RAID-0. You can't upgrade the number of drives or the drive capacity, you can't part it out to sell, it's bigger than 4x2.5" drives, AND you don't get TRIM - the only advantage to using a single, monolithic drive. It's built around a proprietary interface that could (hopefully) be discontinued after this product.
This should have been a negative review from the start instead of a glorified OCZ press release. I hope you return to objectivity and fix this article.
Oh, and how exactly will the x16 card provide "an absolutely ridiculous amount of bandwidth" in any meaningful way if it's a PCIe x16 to 4x PCIe x4 switch? You'd have to RAID the 4 IBIS drives in software and you're still stuck with all the problems above. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkI appreciate you taking the time to comment. I never want to bring my objectivity into question but I will be the first to admit that I'm not perfect. Perhaps I can shed more light on my perspective and see if that helps clear things up.
A standalone IBIS drive isn't really all that impressive. You're very right, it's basically a RevoDrive in a chassis (I should've mentioned this from the start, I will make it more clear in the article). But you have to separate IBIS from the idea behind HSDL.
As I wrote in the article the exciting thing isn't the IBIS itself (you're better off rolling your own with four SF-1200 SSDs and your own RAID controller). It's HSDL that I'm more curious about.
I believe the reason to propose HSDL vs. PCIe External Cabling has to do with the interface requirements for firmware RAID should you decide to put several HSDL drives on a single controller, however it's not something that I'm 100% on. From my perspective, if OCZ keeps the standard open (and free) it's a non-issue. If someone else comes along and promotes the same thing via PCIe that will work as well.
This thing only has room to grow if controller companies and/or motherboard manufacturers introduce support for it. If the 4-port card turns into a PCIe x16 to 4x PCIe x4 switch then the whole setup is pointless. As I mentioned in the article, there's little chance for success here but that doesn't mean I believe it's a good idea to discourage the company from pursuing it.
Take care,
Anand Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkI've clarified the above points in the review, hopefully this helps :)
Take care,
Anand Reply
disappointed1 - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - linkThanks for the clarification Anand. Reply
Guspaz - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkBut why is HSDL interesting in the first place? Maybe I'm missing some use case, but what advantage does HSDL present over just skipping the cable and plugging the SSD directly into the PCIe slot?
I might see the concept of four drives plugged into a 16x controller, each getting 4x bandwidth, but then the question is "Why not just put four times the controllers on a single 16x card."
There's so much abstraction here... We've got flash -> sandforce controller -> sata -> raid controller -> pci-x -> pci-e -> HSDL -> pci-e. That's a lot of steps! It's not like there aren't PCIe RAID controllers out there... If they don't have any choice but to stick to SATA (and I'd point out that other manufacturers, like Fusion-IO decided to just go native PCIe) due to SSD controller availability, why not just use PCIe RAID controller and shorten the path to flash -> sandforce controller -> raid controller -> pci-e?
This just seem so convoluted, while other products like the ioDrive just bypass all this. Reply
bman212121 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkWhat doesn't make sense for this setup is how it would be beneficial over just using a hardware RAID card like the Areca 1880. Even with a 4 port HSDL card you would need to tie the drives together somehow. (software raid? Drive pooling?) Then you have to think about redundancy. Doing raid 5 with 4 Ibis drives you'd lose an entire drive. Take the cards out of the drives, plug them all into one Areca card and you would have redundancy, RAID over all drives + hotswap, and drive caching. (RAM on the Areca card would still be faster than 4 ibis)
Not seeing the selling point of this technology at all. Reply
rbarone69 - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - linkIn our cabinets filled with blade servers and 'pizza box' severs we have limited space and a nightmare of cables. We cannot afford to use 3.5" boxes of chips and we dont want to manage an extra bundle of cables. Having a small single 'extension cord' allows us to store storage in another area. So having this kind of bandwidth dense external cable does help.
Cabling is a HUGE problem for me... Having fewer cables is better so building the controllers on the drives themselves where we can simply plug them into a port is attractive. Our SANs do exactly this over copper using iSCSI. Unfortunatly these drives aren't SANs with redundant controllers, power supplies etc...
Software raid systems forced to use the CPU for parity calcs etc... YUK Unless somehow they can be linked and RAID supported between the drives automagically?
For supercomputing systems that can deal with drive failures better, I can see this drive being the perfect fit. Reply
disappointed1 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkCan the drive controller fall back to SAS when plugged into a motherboard's SAS port? (Reading the article, I suspect a very strong 'no' answer.) Can the HSDL spec and drive RAID controller be adapted to support this?
-No, SAS is a completely different protocol and IBIS houses a SATA controller.
-HSDL is just a interface to transport PCIe lanes externally, so you could, in theory, connect it to an SAS controller.
What booting limitations exist? Is a RAID driver needed for the controller inside the IBIS drive?
-Yes, you need a RAID driver for the SiI 3124.
Are the individual SSD controllers connected to the drive's internal RAID controller seen by the operating system or BIOS? (I'd guess 'no' but not explicitly stated.)
-Neither, they only see the SiI 3124 SATA RAID controller.
Is the RAID controller on the drive seen as a PCI-E device?
Is the single port host card seen by the system's operating system or is entirely passive?
-Passive, the card just pipes the PCIe lanes to the SATA controller.
Is the four HDSL port card seen differently?
-Vaporware at this point - I would guess it is a PCIe x16 to four PCIe x4 switch.
Does the SAS cabling handle PCI-E 3.0 signaling?
-The current card and half-meter cable are PCIe 1.1 only at this point. The x16 card is likely a PCIe 2.0 switch to four PCIe x4 HDSLs. PCIe 3.0 will share essentially the same electrical characteristics as PCIe 2.0, but it doesn't matter since you'd need a new card with a PCIe 3.0 switch and a new IBIS with a PCIe 3.0 SATA controller anyway.
Is OCZ working on a native HDSL controller that'll convert PCI-E to ONFI? Would such a chip be seen as a regular old IDE device for easy OS installation and support for legacy systems? Would such a chip be able to support TRIM?
That's something I'd love to see and it would "do away with SATA as a final drive interface", but I expect it to come from Intel and not somebody reboxing old tech (OCZ). Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkI suspect that many companies are working on SSDs that do away with SATA as a final drive interface. Just as we saw companies like OCZ enter the SSD market before Intel, I suspect we'll see the same thing happen with PCIe SSD controllers. When the market is new/small it's easy for a smaller player to quickly try something before the bigger players get involved. The real question is whether or not a company like OCZ or perhaps even SandForce can do that and make it successful. I agree with you that in all likelihood it'll be a company like Intel to do it and gain mainstream adoption, but we've seen funny things happen in the past with the adoption of standards proposed by smaller players.
Take care,
Anand Reply
Ao1 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkThe difference in time to market is not so much the company size it is the willingness to take risk. Small companies have to take more risks to carve out their market. I think you will find that Intel was working on SSD long before OCZ even thought about selling SSD's. The difference is that Intel spends a lot of time getting the product right before it is released. OCZ simply bypass proper product development and do it in the field with paying customers.
The enthusiast market might be happy trading off performance with reliability but that is not going to happen in the enterprise market. (This is probably a moot point as I actually doubt that enterprise is the true target market for this product).
It would be great to see a lot more focus on aspects outside of performance, which as you have eluded to is no longer a relevant issue in terms of tangible benefit for the majority of users. Reply
cjcoats - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - link"Is the single port host card seen by the system's operating system or is entirely passive?
-Passive, the card just pipes the PCIe lanes to the SATA controller."
Does that mean that Linux (and other non-MS) support is trivially
workable? Reply
mroos - Friday, November 05, 2010 - linkSo if the OS sees SiI3124 then there's actually no RAID inside at all - 3124 is simple 4-port SATA host controller and the RAID there is software RAID.
It would be interesting to see what Linux sees about IBIS. My guess it it will see plain 3124 and 4 SSD-s behind that with no RAID at all, and you can use dmraid etc to RAID them together - so you are actually seeing what's happening and no magic left. Reply
SiliconLunch - Thursday, December 02, 2010 - linkCorrect. I just installed the 240GB IBIS into a Karmic machine and the kernel only sees 4 separate 55GB "drives" - effectively JBOD mode. The Silicon Image 240GB raid0 set (which is reported OK in BIOS during post) is not visible to Linux. I think a driver will need to be published for this. Will explore dmraid options next... Reply
SiliconLunch - Thursday, December 02, 2010 - linkOK, so official comment from OCZ is "The drive is not compatible with Linux". Seriously, OCZ must be kidding. And no one at Anandtech seemed to think this little tidbit was newsworthy in 8 pages of gushing praise? I would think a statement to the effect that non-Windows OS support is non-existent would be mandatory in a review.
I went back and checked the OCZ datasheet, and sure enough, it only mentions Windows. So the blame rests with me for ASSUMING anyone introducing such a device would support contemporary OS's. But, I've just wasted $700, so I feel like a complete loser. And that'll CERTAINLY be the last product I ever buy from OCZ. Reply
ypsylon - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkWhile it may be of some use to speed freaks and number crunchers who running PCs only to get few more random numbers from benchmarks than others before them, I don't see the point in this. Yes of course bandwidth and stuff, all nice. But:
- You can't RAID few of them into some proper RAID level (10,5,6,50,60) because every drive is already "RAID-ed" internally.
- You need a special add-on card which isn't anything standard - not to mention that offers nothing but ports to connect drives.
- There is high degree of probability that such drives won't run properly with standard RAID cards (Areca, Adaptec, LSI, Intel - take your pick)
Instead creating some new "standard" OCZ should focus on lowering costs of SSDs. 2GB/s+ in RAID0 is easily achievable right now. Need 16 SSDs (which is exactly like 4x4 IBIS), 16 port card (like new Arecas 1880) and off you go. Only advantage for OCZ IBIS here is less occupied space with 4 drives instead 16, but still 16x2.5" SSDs takes only 3x5.25" slots with 2x6 and 1x4 backlpanes.
And for heavy duty jobs there are always better solutions like GM-PowerDrive-LSI for example. Delivers 1500MB (R)/1400 MB (W) straight out of the box. Supports all RAID from 0 to 60, 512 MB of on board cache. Need no special new card. It just works. Reply
Ao1 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkFor some reason Anandtech seem to have lost objectivity when it comes to OCZ. This along with the Revodrive = epic fail. Consumers want products that are fit for market as opposed to underdeveloped and over priced products that are full of bugs. OCZ's RMA policy is a substitute for quality control. Reply
sub.mesa - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkThe HSDL-part makes me immediately want to skip this SSD.
But the mentioned Revodrive is quite interesting, as that setup should give you access to TRIM on FreeBSD operating system. Since silicon Image works as normal AHCI SATA controller under non-Windows OS, passing TRIM should also work.
I cannot confirm this, but in theory you should have TRIM when using the Revodrive under FreeBSD and likely also Linux (if you disable the pseudoraid).
A native PCI-express solution would still have to present itself that is affordable. It would be very cool if they made a LSI HBA connected to 4 or 8 Sandforce controllers and have a >1GB/s solution that also supports TRIM (not under Windows). That would be very sleek! Reply
haplo602 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkssds in traditional drive packaging have one big advantage. they can be used in large disk arrays. this new gadget is not usable in anythyng other than a single computer or worksation i.e. it's a DAS solution.
the whole industry from mid level to high end is moving to SAN storage (be it fc, iscsi or infiniband). the IBIS has no future ... Reply
Johnsy - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkI would like to echo the comments made by disappointed1, particularly with regard to OCZ's attempt to introduce a proprietry standard when a cabling spec for PCIe already exists.
It's all well and good having intimate relationships with representatives of companies who's products you review, but having read this (and a couple of other) articles, I do find myself wondering who the real beneficiary is. . . Reply
63jax - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkalthough i am amazed by those numbers you should put the ioDrive there as a standard. Reply
iwodo - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkI recently posted on Anandtech forum about SSD - When we hit the laws of diminishing returns
It is less then 10 days Anand seems to have answer every question we have discussed in the thread. From Connection Port to Software usage.
The review pretty much prove my point. After current Gen Sandforce SSD, we are already hitting the laws of diminishing returns. A SATA 6Gbps SSD, or even a Quad Sandforce SSD like IBIS wont give as any perceptible speed improvement in 90% of out day to day usage.
Until Software or OS takes advantage of massive IOs from SSD. Current Sandforce SSD would be the best investment in terms of upgrades. Reply
iwodo - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkI forgot to mention, with next gen SSD that will be hitting 550MB/s and even slightly more IOPS, there is absolutely NO NEED for HSDL in consumer space.
While SATA is only Half Duplex, benchmarks shows no evidence such limitation has causes any latency problem. Reply
davepermen - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - linkIndeed. the next gen intel ssd on sata3 will most likely deliver the same as this ssd, but without all the proprietary crap. sure, numbers will be lower. but actual performance will most likely be the same, much cheaper, and very flexible (just raid them if you want, or jbod them, or what ever).
this stuff is bullshit for customers. it sounds like some geek created a funky setup to combine it's ssds to great performance, and that's it.
oh, other than that, i bet the latency will be higher on these ocz just because of all the indirections. and latency are the nr. one thing that make you feel the difference of different ssds.
in short, that product is absolute useless crap.
so far, i'm still happy on my intel gen1 and gen2. i'll wait a bit to find a new device that gives me a real noticable difference. and does not take away any of the flexibility i have right now with my simple 1-sata-drive setups.
anand and ocz, always a strange combination :) Reply
viewwin - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkI wonder what Intel thinks about a new competing cable design? Reply
davepermen - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - linki bet they don't even know. not that they care. their ssds will deliver much more for the customer. easy, standards based connection existing in ANY actual system, raidability, trim, and most likely about the same performance experience as this device, but at a much much lower cost. Reply
tech6 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkSince this is really just a cable attached SSD card, I don't see the need for yet another protocol/connection standard. Also the concept of RAID upon RAID also seems somewhat redundant.
I am also unclear as to what market this is aimed for. The price excludes the mass desktop market and yet it also isn't aimed at the enterprise data center - that only leaves workstation power users which are not a large market. Given the small target audience, motherboard makers will most likely not invest their resources in supporting HSDL on their motherboards. Reply
Stuka87 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkIts a very interesting concept, and the performance is of course incredible. But like you mentioned, I just can't see the money being worth it at this point. It is simpler than building your own RAID, as you just plug it in and be done with it.
But if motherboard makers can get on board, and the interface gains some traction, then I could certainly see it taking over SAS/SATA as the interface of choice in the future. I think OCZ is smart to offer it as a free and open standard. Offering a new standard for free has worked very well for other companies in the past. Especially when they are small. Reply
nirolf - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - link<<Note that peak low queue-depth write speed dropped from ~233MB/s down to 120MB/s. Now here's performance after the drive has been left idle for half an hour:>>
Isn't this a problem in a server environment? Maybe some servers never get half an hour of idle. Reply
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkAnand:
I suspect your resiliency test is flawed. Doesn't HD Tach essentially write a string of zeros to the drive? And a Sandforce drive would compress that and only write a tiny amount to flash memory. So it seems to me that you have only proved that the drives are resilient when they are presented with an unrealistic workload of highly compressible data.
I think you need to do two things to get a good idea of resiliency:
(1) Write a lot of random (incompressible) data to the drive to get it "dirty"
(2) Measure the write performance of random (incompressible) data while the SSD is "dirty"
It is also possible to combine (1) and (2) in a single test. Start with a "clean" SSD, then configure IO meter to write incompressible data continuously over the entire SSD span, say random 4KB 100% write. Measure the write speed once a minute and plot the write speed vs. time to see how the write speed degrades as the SSD gets dirty. This is a standard test done by Calypso system's industrial SSD testers. See, for example, the last graph here:
Also, there is a strange problem with Sandforce-controlled "dirty" SSDs having degraded write speed which is not recovered after TRIM, but it only shows up with incompressible data. See, for example:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2010/08/1... Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkIt boils down to write amplification. I'm working on an article now to quantify exactly how low SandForce's WA is in comparison to other controller makers using methods similar to what you've suggested. In the case of the IBIS I'm simply trying to confirm whether or not the background garbage collection works. In this case I'm writing 100% random data sequentially across the entire drive using iometer, then peppering it with 100% random data randomly across the entire drive for 20 minutes. HDTach is simply used to measure write latency across all LBAs.
I haven't seen any issues with SF drives not TRIMing properly when faced with random data. I will augment our HDTach TRIM test with another iometer pass of random data to see if I can duplicate the results.
Take care,
Anand Reply
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkWhat I would like to see is SSDs with a standard mini-SAS2 connector. That would give a bandwidth of 24 Gbps, and it could be connected to any SAS2 HBA or RAID card. Simple, standards-compliant, and fast. What more could you want?
Well, inexpensive would be nice. I guess putting a 4x SAS2 interface in an SSD might be expensive. But at high volume, I would guess the cost could be brought down eventually. Reply
LancerVI - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkI found the article to be interesting. OCZ introducing a new interconnect that is open for all is interesting. That's what I took from it.
It's cool to see what these companies are trying to do to increase performance, create new products and possibly new markets.
I think most of you missed the point of the article. Reply
davepermen - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - linkproblem is, why?
there is NO use of this. there are enough interconnects existing. enough fast, they are, too. so, again, why?
oh, and open and all doesn't matter. there won't be any products besides some ocz stuff. Reply
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkAnand:
After reading your response to my comment, I re-read the section of your article with HD Tach results, and I am now more confused. There are 3 HD Tach screenshots that show average read and write speeds in the text at the bottom right of the screen. In order, the avg read and writes for the 3 screenshots are:
read 201.4
write 233.1
read 125.0
write 224.3
"Note that peak low queue-depth write speed dropped from ~233MB/s down to 120MB/s"
read 203.9
write 229.2
I also included your comment from the article about write speed dropping. But are the read and write rates from HD Tach mixed up? Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkAh good catch, that's a typo. On most drives the HDTach pass shows impact to write latency, but on SF drives the impact is actually on read speed (the writes appear to be mostly compressed/deduped) as there's much more data to track recover since what's being read was originally stored in its entirety.
Take care,
Anand Reply
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkMy guess is that if you wrote incompressible data to a dirty SF drive, that the write speed would be impacted similarly to the impact you see here on the read speed.
In other words, the SF drives are not nearly as resilient as the HD Tach write scans show, since, as you say, the SF controller is just compressing/deduping the data that HD Tach is writing. And HD Tach's writes do not represent a realistic workload.
I suggest you do an article revisiting the resiliency of dirty SSDs, paying particular attention to writing incompressible data. Reply
greggm2000 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkSo how will Lightpeak factor into this? Is OCZ working on a Lightpeak implementation of this? One hopes that OCZ and Intel are communicating here.. Reply
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkThe first lightpeak cables are only supposed to be 10 Gbps. A mini-SAS2 cable has four lanes of 6 Gbps for a total of 24 Gbps. lightpeak loses. Reply
MRFS - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - link> A mini-SAS2 cable has four lanes of 6 Gbps for a total of 24 Gbps.
That was also my point (posted at another site today):
What happens when 6G SSDs emerge soon to comply
with the current 6G standard? Isn't that what many of
us have been waiting for?
(I know I have!)
I should think that numerous HBA reviews will tell us which setups
are best for which workloads, without needing to invest
in a totally new cable protocol.
For example, the Highpoint RocketRAID 2720 is a modest SAS/6G HBA
we are considering for our mostly sequential workload
i.e. updating a static database that we upload to our Internet website,
archiving 10GB+drive images + lots of low-volume updates.
That RR2720 uses an x8 Gen2 edge connector, and
it provides us with lots of flexibility concerning the
size and number of SSDs we eventually will attach
i.e. 2 x SFF-8087 connectors for a total of 8 SSDs and/or HDDs.
If we want, we can switch to one or two SFF-8087 cables
that "fan out" to discrete HDDs and/or discrete SSDs
instead of the SFF-8087 cables that come with the 2720.
$20-$30 USD, maybe?
Now, some of you will likely object that the RR2720
is not preferred for highly random high I/O environments;
so, for a little more money there are lots of choices that will
address those workloads nicely e.g. Areca, LSI etc.
Highpoint even has an HBA with a full x16 Gen2 edge connector.
What am I missing here? Repeating, once again,
this important observation already made above:
"A mini-SAS2 cable has four lanes of 6 Gbps for a total of 24 Gbps."
If what I am reading today is exactly correct, then
the one-port IBIS is limited to PCI-E 1.1: x4 @ 2.5 Gbps = 10 Gbps.
p.s. I would suggest, as I already have, that the SATA/6G protocol
be modified to do away with the 10/8 transmission overhead, and
that the next SATA/SAS channel support 8 Gbps -- to sync it optimally
with PCI-E Gen3's 128/130 "jumbo frames". At most, this may
require slightly better SATA and SAS cables, which is a very
cheap marginal cost, imho.
MRFS Reply
blowfish - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkI for one found this to be a great article, and I always enjoy Anand's prose - and I think he surely has a book or two in him. You certainly can't fault him for politeness, even in the face of some fierce criticism. So come on critics, get real, look what kind of nonsense you have to put up with at Tom's et al! Reply
sfsilicon - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - linkHi Anand,
Thank you for writing the article and shedding some light into this new product and standard from OCZ. Good to see you addressing the objectivity questions posted by some of the other posters. I enjoyed reading the additional information and analysis from some of the more informed poster. I do wonder if the source of the bias of your article is based on your not being aware of some of the developments in the SSD space or just being exposed to too much vendor coolaid. Not sure which one is the case, but hopefully my post will help generate a more balanced article.
I argee with several of the previous posters that this both the IBIS drives and the HDSL interface are nothing new (no matter how hard OCZ marketing might want to make it look like). As one of the previous posters said it is a SSD specific implementation of a PCIe extender solution.
I'm not sure how HDSL started, but I see it as a bridging solution because OCZ does not have 6G technology today. Recently released 6G dual port solutions will allow single SSD drives to transfer up to a theoretical 1200 MB/s per drive.
It does allow higher scaling beyond 1200 MB/s per drive through the channel bundling, but the SAS standardization commity is already looking into that option in case 12Gbps SAS ends up becoming too difficult to do. Channel bundling is inherent to SAS and address the bandwidth threat brought up by PCIe.
The PCIe channel bundling / IBIS Drive solution from OCZ also looks a bit like a uncomfortable balancing act. Why do you need to extend the PCIe interface to the the drive level? Is it just to maintain the more familiar "Drive" based use model? Or is it really a way to package 2 or more 3Gbps drives to get higher performance? Why not stick with a pure PCIe solution?
Assuming you don't buy into the SAS channel bundling story or you need a drive today that has more bandwidth. Why another propriatary solution? The SSD industry is working on NVMHCI which will address the concern of proprietary PCIe card solutions and will allow addressing of PCIe based cards as a storage device (Intel backed and evolved from ACHI).
While OCZ's efforts are certainly to be applauded especially given their aggresive roadmap plans a more balanced article should include references to the above developments to put the OCZ solution into perspective. I'd love to see some follow-up articles on the multi-port SAS and NVMHCI as a primer on what how the SSD industry is addressing technology limitations of today's SSDs. In addition it might be interesting to talk about the recent SNIA performance spec (soon to include client specific workloads) and Jedec's endurance spec.
I continue to enjoy your indepth reporting on the SSD side. Reply
don_k - Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - link"..or have a very fast, very unbootable RAID."
Not quite true actually. PCIe drives of this type, meaning drives that are essentially multiple ssd drives attached to a raid controller on a single board, show up on *nix OS's as individual drives as well as the array device itself.
So under *nix you don't have to use the onboard raid (which does not provide any performance benefits in this case, there is no battery backed cache) and you can then create a single RAID0 for all the individual drives on all your PCIe cards, how many those are. Reply
eva2000 - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - linkwould love to see some more tests on non-windows platform i.e. centos 5.5 64bit with mysql 5.1.50 database benchmarks - particularly on writes. Reply
bradc - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - linkWith the PCI-X converter this is really limited to 1066mb/s, but minus overhead is probably in the 850-900mb/s range which is what we see on one of the tests, just above 800mb/s.
While this has the effect of being a single SSD for cabling and so on, I really don't see the appeal? Why didn't they just use something like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
I hope the link works, if it doesn't, I linked to an LSI 8204ELP for $210. It has a single 4x SAS connector for 1200mb/s, OCZ could link that straight into a 3.5" bay device with 4x Sandforce SSD's on it. This would be about the same price or cheaper than this IBIS device, while giving 1200mb/s which is going to be about 40% faster than the IBIS.
It would make MUCH MUCH more sense to me to simply have a 3.5" bay device with a 4x SAS port on it which can connect to just about any hard drive controller. The HSDL interface thing is completely unnecessary with the current PCI-X converter chip on the SSD. Reply
sjprg2 - Friday, October 01, 2010 - linkWhy are we concerning ourselfs withs memory controllers instead of just going directly to DMA? Just because these devices are static rams doesen't change the fact they are memory. Just treat them as such. Its called KISS it. Reply
XLV - Friday, October 01, 2010 - linkOne clarification: these devices and controllers use multi-lane-sas internal ports and cables, but are electrically incompatible.. what wil happen if one by mistake attaches an IBIS to a SAS controller, or a SAS device to the HSDL controller? the devices get fried, or is there atleast some keying to the connectors, so such a mistake can be avoided? Reply
juhatus - Sunday, October 03, 2010 - link"Even our upcoming server upgrade uses no less than fifty two SSDs across our entire network, and we're small beans in the grand scheme of things."
Why didn't you go for real SAN ? Something like EMC clariion?
You just like pedling with disks, now do you? :) Reply
randomloop - Tuesday, October 05, 2010 - linkIn the beginning, we based our aerial video and imaging recording system on OCZ SSD drives, based on their specs.
They've all failed after several months of operation.
Aerial systems endure quite a bit of jostling. Hence the desire to use SSD's.
We had 5 of 5 OCZ 128G SSD drives fail during our tests.
We now use other SSD drives. Reply
mroos - Friday, November 05, 2010 - linkWhat PCI device do these IBISes provide? Is it something standard like AHCI that has drivers for every OS, or something proprietary that needs new driver written and integrated into all relevant OS-es? Reply
mroos - Friday, November 05, 2010 - linkOK, it looks like the interface to host is SiI 3124. This is widely supported sata HBA and has drivers for most operating systems.
But SiI3124 is just SATA host controller - no RAID. So the RAID must be done host side, or sofRAID in other words. It also means Linux should see 4 distinct SSD devices. Reply
paralou - Saturday, April 09, 2011 - linkHello,
I don't remember if i already posted my question, sorry !
But in installed one IBIS 160GB using the following configurated computer:
ASUS P6T WS Pro (latest BIOS & drivers)
Intel i7 Core 965 Extreme 3.2GHz
Kingston DDR3 1600MHz - 12GB
nVIDIA Quadro FX4800 grphics card
2 Seagate SAS 450GB
Microsoft Windows 7 Pro
After installing Win7 without problems, i installed antivirus BitDefender, several app's (including Adobe package and Microsoft Office Pro), configured Updates NOT AUTOMATIC !
When i stopped my computer, system started downloading 92 Upgrades (without my permission) ?
When i restarted..Crash error 0x80070002
Impossible to restor (i made an image system, but day before !)
Reinstalled, and while i was typing the Key codes for the Microsoft Vision Pro ..
An other crash ! Same problem !
My opinion, about the IBIS HSDL box, it's a very poor assembly design!
Impossible to connec the supply connector on it, and i must dismantle the front plater to have access to the supply connector !
Now, i wonder if i have to follow OCZ's advice about the BIOS configuration?
They are saying:
" You must set you BIOS to use "S1 Sleep Mode" for proper operation.
Using S3 or AUTO may cause instability ".
And what about the internal HDD's ?
Is there any member who already installed such IBIS and use it regularely.
If the answer is Yes (?) can you please tell me how you configured your system ?
Paralou Reply
MySchizoBuddy - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - linkOCZ doesn't have PCIe x16 option like FusionIO ioDrive Octal which takes the reads to 6GB/s Reply