Two words:

[tuba-man.livejournal.com]

Apple Xserve.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

is that good or is that bad?

[tragicsupergirl.livejournal.com]

Judging by the mood: bad I guess...

[curvemudgeon.livejournal.com]

No details necessary - I hear ya man.

[toxico.livejournal.com]

Seconded.

[daddykatt.livejournal.com]

my wife uses a coloring-book.... errr Mac too...

also full of fail

[sgt-easton.livejournal.com]

Best response ever.

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

[troll]still better than the Vista game loader[/troll]

[red-scully.livejournal.com]

YOU WIN FIVE SHINY NEW INTERNETS.

[gholam.livejournal.com]

I've never worked with one, so I don't quite understand - what is the point of Xserve?

[ghostdandp.livejournal.com]

very good question

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

It's slightly less painful a solution for serving to PC's than a Sun box.

[japester.livejournal.com]

are you saying that Sun kit is painful?
::laughs::

Solaris is painful if you haven't spent the time to learn it, just like every other operating system. Sun hardware itself, is IMO great stuff. and if you don't like Solaris, run Windows, Linux or ESX on it.

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

I actually quite like Solaris.

What I don't like is getting it to integrate well with non-*NIX OS's. If I've got to serve file/print services to PC's or Macs I'll take the XServe. If I need a rock-solid *NIX box to serve standard services the Solaris box is very high on my list.

[buckaction.livejournal.com]

frankly i can't stand the people that insist on running something other than solaris. makes my job ALOT harder. this is why i hate the Xboxes and love the SPARC system


also, FUCK ILOM.

[japester.livejournal.com]

heh heh
The iLOM is a scary piece of bastardisation, taking the best ideas of PROM and mashing them up into tiny little pieces.
Hell, even aLOM is pretty wrecked. Which command set do you want today?

Sun, creating standards since the dark ages.

[singitsilent.livejournal.com]

In general I'd have to disagree, though with anything there can be frustrations.

[tuba-man.livejournal.com]

I think the problem is that I'm trying to approach OS X from a legit UNIX standpoint, instead of the weird bastard-child-of-a-sysadmin-and-graphic-designer standpoint it more rightly deserves.

At least it's nice enough to make me reboot to install a web browser update. It reminds me of working on Windows.

[greatblondino.livejournal.com]

'Reminds me of Windows' - noooo! Windows actually *works*. I made the mistake of buying an XServe for work once, sold on the promises of Windows network integration. After six months of swearing and late nights restoring the entire system from backup, I finally got the bastard thing to talk to Active Directory. It's an evil pig, where they've installed every major open-source server component (BIND, Kerberos, Apache, SAMBA, whatever) and pissed about with it so *none* of the regular methods for managing those components work - you have to use Apple's goddamned ass-backward as f**k UIs.

I use a Mac at home, but I'd never touch one for business again. Thinking that OS X Server is snything like UNIX is a biiig mistake.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Apple's goddamned ass-backward as f**k UIs

Yeah I sympathize, mine's a frustrating mess too - and the kicker is they only use it to serve Filemaker, and a Win server would've been fine for that. Can you not just fire up Terminal and do it all in the cl?

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

The best solution I found to most of that was to use the installed version of Apache and SAMBA, but install everything else manually to *NIX defaults.

[jecook]

I hear ya- We have exactly *three* macs at work- one in Marketing, on in our lab that rarely gets use, and a third that sits alone, unused, unloved, and dusty in our warehouse.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

They're not so bad, you just have to learn their zen. Me I gotta figure out how to get WebDAV working on one; I think I just gotta modify httpd.conf but the fricking thing has four copies of httpd.conf on it and I dunno which one is the active one...

[patgund.livejournal.com]

*Shrug* I've found them (and OS X Server) to be fairly trouble-free. (We do heavy OD work, but I've worked on XSAN installations as well.)

The problem is that you do have to integrate your *nix and Mac skills. If you have too much of one over the other, it's like making love to a alien - nothing works quite like you think it should.

[japester.livejournal.com]

I've yet to find a use for an XServe that cannot be more appropriately done with a real *nix box, a Win2k{3,8} box or a G5.
They're overpriced cr*p. and this is from someone who has spent a good 5 years administering them. thankfully, not any more :)