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One thing that us 3D guys sorely miss is the cluster node option that Apple used to have. Bang for buck the Xserve doesn't stack up and I believe that would be due to things that we dont need in 3D. All we really need is processing power and a small amount of space. The MacPros stack up well price-wise but we cant fit 100 of them in our server room!

We were just forced to add more Windows based cluster nodes again to meet a deadline - I really wish Apple had a product for this so I could keep solid OSX on everything!

Steve Bell

Archiform 3D architectural renderings

Rather than adding another NIC when you need access to two separate LANs, you can use 802.1Q VLANs instead in conjunction with a smart switch or router.

No, you can't. ;)
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(Doesn't know what the h* you're talking about.)

thebiggfrogg said:

I assume you're talking about my post.

802.1Q VLANs or "Virtual LANs" are a way to set up multiple separate networks over the same physical cabling; they work by tagging each Ethernet frame with a VLAN identifier, then only equipment that is on the same VLAN can see those frames. On Mac OS X, you can configure them from the Network pane in System Preferences (hit the gear button and choose ?Manage Virtual Interfaces??)

AFAIK the Lights Out Management hardware doesn?t use VLAN tags, so once you?ve configured your server to use VLANs for normal Ethernet traffic, the only untagged traffic is from LOM. As a result, it's easy (using a router or a smart switch) to separate the LOM traffic from any other traffic while keeping everything nice and secure.

My point was that the article was criticising the Xserve for only having two Ethernet ports, whereas some other servers have a separate LOM port, which at first glance seems more secure. But if you use a smart switch, there's really very little difference since you can easily arrange for the LOM traffic to take a different?and logically separate?route through the network. In fact, on servers with a separate port, chances are that many enterprise grade set-ups are doing something similar anyway, the only difference being that they'll need an extra switch port and an extra bit of wire.

Maybe this is getting a bit technical for Macworld though :-)