The firm's findings indicate that companies seeking to run a Unix-based server operation may not need to look further than Apple's new entrant in the hotly contested 1U server race.

The Race Is On

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is well-known for performing "bake-off" speed demonstrations during his Macworld Expo keynote presentations. The tests generally involve Apple's latest Power Mac G4 pitted against a similarly configured Pentium system -­- and the Mac always handily beats its Wintel competitor.

For testing purposes, Xinet ran two specific operations on several systems, including the Sun Fire 4800 with 12 processors, the SGI 3200 with eight processors, the SGI 300 with four processors, the Sun Fire 880 with four processors, the Sun Fire 280R with two processors, the Xserve with two processors, a run-of-the-mill Power Mac G4 with two processors, and a Dell PowerEdge 1650 with two processors running Windows 2000.

All of the platforms that Xinet tested used a single copper Gigabit Ethernet network with a single switch.

One test was designed to show AppleShare file-serving performance, the other to illustrate the speed of output generation.

Output Generation

In the output generation test, Xinet instructed each server to produce 2400 DPI screened TIFF output files from a complex eight-page PostScript document.

When performing this task, the Xserve generated about seven pages per minute with 12 simultaneous jobs, placing it ahead of the Dell 1650, which produced about six pages per minute with the same load.

The top performer was the Sun Fire 4800 with 12 processors, which cranked out about 14 pages per minute.

Photoshop Performance

In the second test, Xinet tested throughput for opening files in Photoshop.

The Photoshop test showed an even more dramatic advantage for the Xserve over its Windows competitor. The Xserve managed about 85 MB/sec of throughput with 10 clients, while the Dell buckled under heavy load and delivered only about 40 MB/sec with the same number of clients.

Once again, the Sun Fire 4800 took top honors, generating about 105 MB/sec of throughput.

Price/Performance

"The Xserve is a very competitive 1U server in both price and performance," Xinet CEO and chief engineer Scott Seebass told NewsFactor.

As tested, the Dell 1650 with 108 GB of hard drive space carries a price tag of about US$4900, while the Xserve with 120 GB of hard drive space comes in at about $4500.

Choice OS

"What will probably have the greatest effect on whether a corporation is interested in the Xserve is the operating system. If the company wants Unix, Apple is in a good position because they have a Unix OS that they are already spending considerable resources developing for the desktop," Seebass said.

While Linux variants have made great strides in the corporate server market, no single flavor of Linux has been able to concentrate the kinds of resources available to a corporation like Apple.

"The size of Apple's installed base means that considerably more commercial software will be developed for it -- much more, for example, than for a particular flavor of Linux," Seebass noted.

"So, for the non-Windows market, Apple is in a very good position," he added. "To make inroads into organizations that use Windows servers, however, Apple will have to demonstrate they can provide a lower cost of ownership, and that will take time."