For those of you who were waiting to buy a Data Robotics Drobo, wait no longer!
Data Robotics announced the release of the second iteration of their 4-bay expandable storage solution, Drobo. Many potential buyers were aghast at the original version's lack of FireWire, so the company added FireWire 800 (FireWire 400 compatible) ports to the original USB 2.0 connection. Transfer speeds with FireWire 800 are expected to be about double those of the USB connection.
The new Drobo also has improved software. The old model would see a drop in performance after the array reached about 50% of capacity. With the new software, performance remains steady regardless of how much data you've packed into your Drobo. Data Robotics says Mac users can expect a performance increase of 10 - 200%.
When new, higher-capacity drives become available, you'll be able to expand the capacity of your Drobo to up to 16 TB. That should be enough to handle all of my TUAW comment email! The second-generation Drobo becomes available in about three weeks, and the original $499 price tag is still in effect for an unpopulated box (no drives included).
Updated to note that no FireWire 400 ports are included. Thanks to Neg and See3Pio for the heads-up!
One of the features prominently touted by Apple in the new XSan 2 is its support for 3rd party storage solutions. It looks like there is a very good reason for that: Apple is no longer making the Xserve RAID. That's right, if you head on over to the XServe Raid's former home on Apple.com you're greeted with some information about the Promise VTrak E-Class RAID Subsystem, and a link to find out more on Promise's website.
It would seem that Apple wasn't making enough money in the fast paced Enterprise storage market and is bowing out. This makes lots of sense to me, since (for the most part) storage is a commodity market, and that is something Apple has never been interested in. Now the company can focus on making the software that one uses to power and manage your SAN (i.e. XSan 2) the best in the market (and judging from the screenshots it looks a lot better than most SAN software I've used).
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.
Let me ask you something: do you like fast storage? Redundant, fast storage? Lots and lots of gigabytes of fast, redundant storage? Sure you do, buddy -- but what's with the software RAID on your Mac Pro or your Intel-based XServe? That's so last week, now that Apple is shipping the RAID cards for Mac Pro and XServe; you can now do hardware RAID 0, 1, 5, or (Mac Pro only) 0+1 arrays of SATA drives, or superfast SAS drives on the XServe, for the precise mix of speed and reliability that you're craving.
Formerly only available as build-to-order options but now shipping as add-in parts for $999 each, the cards come with a raft of requirements. First, they're only for the machines mentioned above; G5 XServes are out of luck. Second, you can't mix and match drive types on the XServe, it's all SAS or all SATA please. Third, a minor point, barely worth mentioning really, but both these cards are listed as requiring some sort of OS update. Yes, on the heels of this morning's announcement of the MacBook revisions, we now have a total of three pieces of Apple hardware that demand Leopard to work at all.
Update: Clarified that the cards were previously available as BTO parts. Note that even though the specifications say Leopard-only for these cards, existing RAID cards (and possibly these as well, for anyone brave enough to spend a grand to test them) continue to work with Tiger. via Apple Hot News -- thanks Nelson
Oh Apple, you sly devil, what with all the secretly upgrading hardware and not even telling us. Thanks to eagle-eyed reader Eric Wortman, we now also found that the Mac Pro gained a RAID card option for those who need mounds of storage and a secure, redundant system with which to manage it. The card supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 0+1, and Enhanced JBOD. The card also features a 256MB cache and a 72 hour battery with which to protect that cache, and it occupies the top PCI Express card slot, connecting to all four internet drive bays.
What's all this RAID connectivity going to cost you? A cool $999 on top of the price of your Mac Pro.
TUAW reader omdothas posted a sweet shot of his Mac mini raid - artfully arranged, we might add - to our Flickr pool. He uses it as a backup of his main Linux system, and it updates itself hourly. Pretty cool.
If you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr pool. Each Sunday (or Monday) we'll comb through the most recent entries and declare a "Rig of the Week!"
There's been a lot of buzz the last few days about Drobo, the "storage robot" from Data Robotics. The best way to get a sense of what it can do is to watch this promotional video. Basically, the Drobo, which has four SATA drive bays, plugs into your Mac via USB and looks to the Mac just like a large USB mass storage device. According to our blog compadres over at Engadget (who have the full skinny), it "uses pooled virtualized storage" (not RAID) to create what looks to your Mac like a single drive, but which has data protection and redundancy features. Best of all, the hard drives are hot swappable. You can add and remove hard drives on the fly without corrupting your data either because of hard drive failure or merely to add more storage space. All of this is transparent to the host computer, which never notices anything has happened.
All of this storage robotics coolness is expensive, however. The Drobo sells for $699 without any drives. You'll need to install at least two SATA hard drives in the Drobo and it handles all the rest.
You'd think, judging on the name alone, that iSCSI was an Apple product -- perhaps an easier-to-use, shiny, beveled version of the original SCSI? If wishing made it so: sadly, it's only an implementation of SCSI over IP, allowing hosts to connect to remote drives, RAIDs, SANs or tape libraries over standard Ethernet connections. While early iSCSI gear was noticeably slow compared to Fibre Channel and other storage fabric connections, the latest stuff is quite snappy, especially when combined with 10G Ethernet connectivity.
Up until now, the only iSCSI initiators (drivers) available for Mac OS X were paid affairs, usually bundled with hardware or management tools. Now, in advance of the anticipated inclusion of iSCSI with Leopard, the good people at Studio Network Solutions have proffered up a free-as-in-beer version of the globalSAN iSCSI initiator for OS X. No support offered, so download and deploy with caution.
When it rains it pours as the Morton Salt company says, which really has nothing to do with this post. First Apple updates the Xserve RAID and then they update the Xserve RAID Admin Tools 1.5.1. I smell conspiracy. No, wait, that's just the salt again.
This update brings support for the larger disks in the slightly revamped Xserve RAID, as well as a number of other fixes that are listed in the support doc.
Attention Apple enterprise geeks: Apple has just updated the Xserve RAID. The Xserve RAID, in case you are not aware, is Apple's very competitively priced storage solution. The Xserve RAID can now be configured to sport 14 750 GB drives, which translates to a whopping 10.5TB (that's a lot of iTunes tracks), up from 7TB.
Also of note, the two top tier pre-configured versions have dropped in price ($300, and $600 cheaper respectively). The 500 GB drive modules have also been priced down from $649 to $599.
Go forth and get your storage on, as the kids say (the kids say that, right?). Thanks, Jonathan.
When you
think Apple most people think iPods not enterprise level storage solutions, but that may all be changing (well, in the
enterprise at least). It is no secret that Apple's XServe RAID is one of the best values on the market and that has
allowed Apple to rise from the 12th spot in the
storage market to the 10th spot in a year (based on $185 million in sales).
Some more interesting bits:
Apple has shipped 76 petabytes of storage
roughly 40% of XServe RAIDS are in non-Mac
environments
One Mac mini plus four
400GB drives. omdot uses this set up as his backup server. If his Linux box goes down, the mini RAID can immediately
(just about) take over. Plus, the blue LEDs look cool.
If you bought a PowerMac G5, or if you're still going to buy one because you hate
all that is Intel and you suspect Apple will switch over their
desktops next, be sure to check out some of the SATA hard disk options currently on the market. If you choose, for
example, to upgrade your drives from the Apple Store, note that you will pay:
250gig SATA hard
drive: $275*
500gig SATA hard drive: $575*
Now if you buy 500gig SATA hard drives from, for
example, Western Digital, you will pay:
Remember, if you RAID it up, Mix it up! Try to use different models and makes of
hard drives for your RAIDs. If a drive fails in a machine, chances are
a similar make and model could** fail soon thereafter.
From what I know there is only room for two SATA
drives in a PowerMac G5 (without adding any controller cards), so why not put in two 500gig drives yourself? Sell that
Wow Original Apple Hard drive !!! 250gig !!! Must L@@K! on eBay to offset your
costs.
* (Algebraically derived from today's Apple Store prices, if you need to see the math, call me.) ** (This of course is up to chaos theory and many other electrical factors. Your second drive may outlive even your
favorite parrot. You just can't know.)
Now that you know the basics of Xsan you'll be wanting some hardware to run that sucker on. However, how are you to choose between all the available options?
They have just posted a very nice review of the Xserve RAID which everyone should read just to see this, 'The Apple Xserve RAID
is undoubtedly the cheapest precanned fibre channel storage array available today. More and more people are using these puppies for one
reason: cost. Stylish good looks never hurt either.'
I love it when Apple hardware is the cost effective choice.
For those of you who were waiting to buy a Data Robotics Drobo, wait no longer!
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