Actually, it finally arrived on Monday, after slightly over 4 months on the waiting list. After it was taken out of the box and plugged in, it took maybe 5 minutes to fully configure the machine. Now, we just have to copy some APOLLO apps and resources on it, and it's good to go!
This beauty sports dual 2GHz G5 processors, and a moderate-sized 80GB drive - we'll tie it into our XRAID as soon as the card arrives, so it will have something silly like 3.5TB of storage space. It's a little RAM starved at the moment, coming with the stock 512MB - that won't do for long...
![XServe Cluster Node](http://www.darcynorman.net/images/xserve_cluster_node.gif)
I was a little stumped as to how I would configure the server. Previously, I'd had to connect a monitor and do the config locally, logged into the machine "in person". I actually had to search the docs, and it mentioned Server Assistant. Sure, I've used it locally before (you know, standing in front of the server, with a monitor plugged in and all), but I was completely surprised by the remote config function (which I had previously never noticed) - I launched it on my Tibook (on the other side of the building from the new XServe), and it scanned the LAN looking for servers that needed configuring. I selected the shiny new XServe, provided the serial number, and was done the whole process in under 5 minutes, with a fully configured, fully functional, secure application server.