Filed under: Enterprise, Software, Apple Professional, Xserve, Apple
Apple launches Xsan 2
In addition to dropping the price on the Shuffle (and introducing the 2 GB version), today's big Apple store update appears to be the launch of Xsan 2. Xsan is Apple's Storage Area Network (SAN) file system, and while this update isn't as sexy as a new consumer laptop update, it's still pretty cool.Xsan 2 has been received some significant updates; not only is it now fully compatible with both OS X Leopard and OS X Server Leopard (in fact, Leopard is required to run Xsan 2), it is also now qualified to work with third-party RAID storage.
Even more exciting (at least for anyone who has been holding out for some kind of Final Cut server solution) is the introduction of what Apple is calling, MultiSAN. MultiSAN, according to Apple, "[allows] users on a single workstation to access multiple SANs at the same time." Using the video editing example, this means that a segment producer could access both a broadcast and b-roll volume from the same machine. Additionally, the administration tools have been redesigned. Administrators can now create pre-set volume workload settings for different file types/purposes.
To be clear, this is an enterprise product. Xsan 2 is available now for $999 US. Xsan 2 is qualified to work with the Xserve, Mac® Pro and Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X cards, as well as qualified Fibre Channel switches and RAID storage hardware from third-party vendors.
Update: As Tim in the comments pointed out, it appears that Apple's Xserve RAID device is no more. The page now re-directs here, with a link to Promise's RAID solution.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tim said 9:36AM on 2-19-2008
No more xraid, its gone from the site!
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conigs said 10:00AM on 2-19-2008
Also to point out, Xsan is (or at least used to be) an Apple branded version of Quantum's StorNext File System (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xsan)
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Jamus said 10:14AM on 2-19-2008
XSAN2, but still no Final Cut Server?
Sniff, sniff. Sniff, sniff. Do I detect a hint of vaporware?!?
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Christina Warren said 10:37AM on 2-19-2008
Yeah, that smell is wafting over here too
Steve-o said 10:35AM on 2-19-2008
Er, isn't this Xserve? http://www.apple.com/xserve/
I was able to configure and put one in a shopping cart 2 minutes ago....
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Christina Warren said 10:36AM on 2-19-2008
The RAID array is gone.
Sam W said 10:47AM on 2-19-2008
Just priced an X-RAID out on the 5th and started the PO process... going to start that again lol oh well... The new Promise VTrak systems are far faster it seems then the old X-RAIDs. Anyone have any comments on the Promise solution?
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Dan said 5:38PM on 2-19-2008
WEll considering fiberchannel, is WAY overpriced, and the hardware is just insane!
Get a iScsi SAN with a 10GBE if you need the throughput, or trunk a few 1GB ports together either way you will get almost the same performance at 20% the cost of fiberchannel. There are tons of iSCSI options out there and since they are block level, they are OS agnostic, so as long as you have an iSCSI connector your in business.
I would stray away from a sofware based SAN there is nothing good that can come of that, not to mention the software sits on your server, so you better have a good DR scenerio in place just incase something happens to your server :)
Get a dedicated SAN not this software stuff...
Bob Smith said 6:15PM on 2-19-2008
Where can I get an inexpensive drive rack like that? Just power supply and drive bays, no RAID or SAN hardware.
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