I am about to pull the trigger on a xserve purchase:

Up the memory to 4GB
Fill one bay with SATA 1TB (the others I fill tehm when I need them with more SATA 1TBs)

otherwise standard set up. If you know of a rumor that says new servers are coming out shortly tell me now.

I saw an article in which Apple stated that no new hardware is expected before MW.

When you do the memory, you may find that it's easier to go to 5GB than it is to 4 as many of them come with 1GB in it already.

depending on your needs, you may also want to get two drives and have them mirrored for reliability.

these machines are sweet -- you'll love it.

Thanks for the memory tip. On the drives, we have them backed up each night and they aren't the kind of info that losing a half day would cause harm. More that we might need the extra two TBs but why buy them until the day we need them because the price will always be cheaper.

It is replacing a very first edition Xserve which has served us well but is a tad long in the tooth now. If you are using Xserves to do the forums, I want some of that speed.

[edit] Come to think of it I should just buy it with the standard 1GB memory and walk over to Microcenter to put more in.

Be careful on the memory for the Xserves. It's not the same as most of the other machines -- so make sure you get the right stuff.

As for the mirrored drive, the cost is so low on media right now -- that you may want to think about it. If one fails, your users will literally never know.

In fact, we've got to put one in here for the forums on the new Xserve we have you guys on.

Hope that helps,
Neil

Thanks, I forgot about the order and it was sent in this morning with the 4 GB. I thought, "drat" until I read your post. Better to stick with Apple on this one as I don't want to be sitting down in the computer server room with ear muffs changing memory.

Update on this Xserve: works great. I share the screen so I can run some programs on a non busy processor on a separate screen. But mostly the xserve is for an FTP server which is really getting loaded up. I am running a project that is handing out a bunch of 2GB files and it seems to handle this well. I use Rumpus as an FTP server software. I have used this for years so it is mostly just what I am used to. Completely easy to set up a dozen labs with separate directories and log ins in which we drop data.

Hi guys, I am new on the site.
I have a new XServe (2 processors, 16 GB ram, 3 x 300 HD mirrored; back up with time capsule during the day); there is a network of 10 MacMini hoocked on it... and I find it slow... In fact I am looking for advice to tune up the efficiency and speed of the system.
Thank guy for your hints.
Chuk4740

Not really the one to ask since I don't use time capsule but I would ask myself exactly what and why I am running time capsule the way I am and what I would do if I had a hard drive crashed and required recovering.

Match the backup to the way you work. If ten minis are constantly changing the contents on a server and the server was backing up so it would instantly have a file replacement that might make the server very slow. I would look at what you would lose if you set your backup to fire off every night at midnight. You lose the ability to get that email you just deleted but is that ability really worth a slow server? Can you recover if you have to go back to a version you had the night before?

For that reason I have for years had servers backup once at night. Crucial files are always floating back and forth so there are multiple copies to fall back on.

Hi Polymerase, Thanks for the reply.
I was working in the bush; and still working on the way to optimise the server; I discover there is no mirroring at all on the system... but a backup of live data from HDD0 on HDD1 at 12:00 pm and another backup from HDD0 to HDD3 at 01:00 am... During the day, Time Capsule does its work (incremental backing up HDD0,1,3 on a firewired HD for offsite), not touching the HDD0's live data on which the Minis are working with.