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Technology (Apple) Businesses Apple Technology

XServe RAID Finally Makes An Entrance 47

Posted by Hemos from the growing-up-fruity dept.
Currawong writes "Apple's very delayed 3U XServe RAID box has quietly appeared on their web site with details. Most interesting being that it uses ATA100 drives, rather than the usual SCSI, making it a bargain at US$10,999 for 2.52TB, especially compared to similar devices that cost up to 10 times as much for the same storage capacity. In addition, ATTO announced at the same time a MacOSX only dual-channel fibre channel SCSI card."
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XServe RAID Finally Makes An Entrance More

XServe RAID Finally Makes An Entrance

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  • I wonder (Score:3)

    by Oculus Habent ( 562837 ) <oculus.habent@gma i l . c om> on Monday March 10, 2003 @08:29AM (#5475683) Journal
    I wonder what kind of acceptance rate the Xserve RAID will acheive. It seems like a useful product, but might only get niche use, as many people still view Apple products as incompatible, expensive, and underpowered, regardless of the truth. *sigh*

    • Re:I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)

      by fhammond ( 126717 )
      It might be useful for people doing SD or even HD editing on the Mac. There are plenty of third-party RAID solutions for the Mac but for this market (i.e. it's gotta work, Apple has to support it and we don't care if it's expensive), the Xserve RAID would be very appealing.

      http://www.lafcpug.org/review_xserve_raid.html [lafcpug.org]

      According to Apple, a maxed-out Xserve RAID can support an HD 1080i stream. That would be quite a thing to see. I wonder how loud this thing is? You'd hope that Apple would have predicted it'd be used by people with a G4 on their desk, not just by people with an Xserve in their data center.
      • Final Cut Pro 4 will come out next month.

        There's some very intresting rumors regarding HD + XRaid and XServes for network rendering floating about. Apple's hopefully going to go after the mid-range Avid market.

    • Re:I wonder (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Twirlip of the Mists ( 615030 ) <twirlipofthemists@yahoo.com> on Monday March 10, 2003 @01:46PM (#5477917)
      When you get into a purchase this big, nobody buys based on name-brand alone. When you're looking at spending a minimum of about $10,000, you darn well do the math to figure cost per terabyte and you compare features and serviceability and whatnot.
      • When you get into a purchase this big, nobody buys based on name-brand alone. When you're looking at spending a minimum of about $10,000, you darn well do the math to figure cost per terabyte and you compare features and serviceability and whatnot.

        Thats a very logical statement but in practice its not what happens a lot of the time.

        $10k is not much money to a company. When you are a manager spending other peoples money (OPM) you just want to solve a problem not spend your time researching all the options. (Ironically, that same manager might spend 6 months trying to decide what home computer to buy :-) )

        Ive seen CEOs that know zero about computers buy $20k Dell servers just because of the name brand. That company is now out of business BTW.
        • $10k is not much money to a company.

          Can you email me the name and address of your company, please? I'd like to send them a resume.
          • Microsoft, Boeing, Berkshire Hathaway, Exxon. They'd probably give you a budget.
            • Having worked with three out of four of those companies, coincidentally, I can tell you that $10,000 is a very big sum to them.

              To paraphrase the Simpsons, you don't get to be the biggest companies in the world by writing a bunch of checks.
              • You don't get to be the biggest companies in the world by writing a bunch of checks.

                BBC News [216.239.53.100]:

                As Texas governor, Mr Bush quietly set up a committee led by Exxon, with other big oil and chemical companies, to advise him what to do about the state's deadly air pollution.

                Regulators wanted compulsory cuts in emissions of up to 50% - this "secret" committee instead proposed making the cuts voluntary.

                Mr Bush duly steered the polluters plan through the state legislature.

                Huge donations

                Texas anti-corruption law made it illegal to donate money to Mr Bush as governor whilst such legislation was under consideration.

                But that month, Mr Bush declared for his candidacy for president - making the $150,000 donated by committee members and their representatives completely legal.
      • You really think people won't just buy a name-brand when shopping for such a product? Well, I have to say I do. I don't piece together PC's. I will never piece together a RAID array ever again. If Apple sells it, then it must work with my Apple servers. Why would someone piece together a RAID array to save $500? Or even $1000? Maybe if your not afraid of your machine not working how you would like. But I want my computers to work. I don't want to have to tear my RAID array apart and fix wiring. You see, Apple makes quality products. They don't sell you a Macintosh with 5 different kinds of networking solutions. They give you a ethernet port that works on 3 speeds. They put copper gigabit in my G4 at work. I don't use gigabit. If I was buying a Dell, or another PC I'd have the option of getting gigabit, in _a seperate card_ which I sure as heck don't wish to do. One more thing to support. One more foreign object in the system. With this RAID array, you just plug it in and go. They even sell a _service package_ (extra HD and such) with the unit if you want. You don't have to buy seperate harddrives. You can go to a Apple certified service department and have them fix this for you. Probably for many years to come. _With the same hardware it came with._ Apple is good with this. I remember a RAID array I had on a WinNT server a few years back. One of the harddrives failed. The person who bought the thing (my old boss) bought a extra drive when we bought the beast, so I put it in there. Worked alright. Then a second drive went out. What was I to do? I bought a ultra160 drive and stuck it in there, some oddball drive because they didn't build the drives that we had bought with the thing anymore. So I had 7 drives all the same and one oddball. The system never was as stable after that. I ended up just ditching the whole thing and storing data on their own seperate harddrives within the unit, and using a well built backup system. I guess I don't have all the experience in the world with RAID, but if I had to choose a RAID array for my current 2 MacOS X 10.1.x servers, I would choose the Apple one.

        Think about this, Xserve's are built to be in a rack. The Apple RAID arrays are built to be in a rack (although they don't have to be). Lots of people have their server racks very far away from their offices. Like if you had your server housed at semaphore? (semaphore.net) Or Exodus, or whereever, it doesn't matter. Some businesses keep their servers maybe a floor below the computer people, this means if something breaks, you are right there to fix it. How much time does it take for you to fix it? Does it take $500 worth of your time in the life of the product? Will your savings in brand and/or quality make up for your time? Will the Apple RAID arrays work better since they are all pieced together the same? These things are made to _work_. They are not a empty box, with connectors on it, waiting for some noname, or bandname harddrives to be installed. They all have the same thing. Why? Apple tests to see if the drives they put in their/your equipment work, if the drive works well enough, Apple mass produces it.

        To make sure people don't think I'm on the wrong side here, I have to say this too. Apple's bean counters (yeah, the people who think about MONEY) have created some problems with Apple hardware. I had quite a problem hooking some iMac's and G4's to a managed hub some time back. Why was this? This is because Apple had switched some Ethernet controller switch and it happened to not be compatible with the 10megabit hub we were using. How did I fix this, before the software update was available? I had gone out and bought like 20 or 30 Netgear 5-port 10/100 switches to install in between the machines and the old "POS" hub. I would have replaced the hub with a HP 10/100 switch, but the wiring in the building was not good enough for this, and the hub wasn't my responsibility, it belonged to another department (Computing and Communications). (Yes, I work for a University.)

        Bottom line;
        No Hassle. Saves time. Maybe even saves money.
        You choose. Something you know works? Or something that _may_ work. I will always choose something that just plain works.

        Think I'm lazy? I'm not really. Well, sometimes. But, my servers run. My servers KEEP running. I have far better uptimes than anyone else that I personally know at the University I work at. Some of the big mainframes have been up quite a bit longer, but I don't have the kind of money they spend on the UPSes. I also keep the upgrades rolling in. Some think that uptime matters more, more than updates even. I don't run updates during working hours, I stay late, I do them after hours. Does this cause short outages for a person or two every year? Sure. I do believe that out of the (hang on, checking logs......) 18 minutes my FileMaker Pro server was down last year, that nobody even tried to use it.

        I bought a keychain mass storage memory thingy the other month. I chose a "256MB Lexar Media Jump Drive 2.0" for the brand and model. Why? Because I _know_ it will work. I plugged this thing into my USB 1.1 port (G4, mirrored drive doors running MacOS X 10.2.x). Guess what happened? A drive icon popped up on the desktop called "LEXAR MEDIA" or some such. I didn't have to do _anything_ except plug the thing in. So that night I came home, plugged it into my Dell Dimension XPSB866, running Windoze 2000, had to click "OK" a few times and it did the same thing, just popped up on my screen. Now this is quality. ((On another note, MacOS X didn't ask _anything_ when seeing this device, windows did. Makes me think.)) It's USB 2.0 (good for my PC anyways, the Mac doesn't seem to understand what USB 2.0 is, at least not a NEC USB 2.0 card on MacOS X 10.2.3ish.) Lexar Media is a good brand. (Lexar Media is the _only_ company that Sony has allowed to make Memory Sticks.) Of course other brands were cheaper, but I don't know for sure if they will work. I also don't know for sure that they will be supported in future versions of MacOS or Windows. I am pretty damned sure Lexar Media will be around for some time to come. I don't know this about some other companies, and I sure as hell don't have time to check every company I see a matching product for. I know this wasn't a huge purchase, but I think it's a good example.

        Before I go. I wish to say something. I believe MacOS X is the best OS I have used. I have used many many OSes. Windoze 95-XP, MacOS 6-9, all sorts of *NIX command lines (which I do love still, nothing like a 80 column 25 line black terminal) and of course X11. MacOS X 10.2.x (not so much the earlier versions) is a whole lot more advanced than all of these. Things just work. I don't want to mess around configuring stuff all over the place. I plug something in, it works.

        OK, I'm done ranting. Send one back eh? I love arguing.
        (wow, I just previewed. Longest comment I've ever sent, but a LONGSHOT. :)

        Blah blah blah. I'm _finally_ done now.

        --
        Nate Hart - nhart at NbOoSnPeAzM dot net
        (ditch the caps)
        http://bonez.net/
        • Boy, did you ever miss the point. Go back and read again. I said that nobody buys a big-ticket item like this on brand name alone.
          • Gee, lets see. Yes they do. I would. Apple 2.5TB RAID or no-name (or even name-brand) 2.5TB RAID. I'd go with the Apple simply because it matches my computer brand, and I know it'll work. This is all in the "brand name alone".
        • Wow. You're either really bored or a ranting, lunatic motormouth. Or both. ;)
    • Especially since I've been buying IDE-FC RAID boxes for two years w/o paying the Apple Tax(tm).

      But I will admit, their price isn't bad. I don't care for their lack of support for other OS's. But that would be too much to ask, now wouldn't it?

  • Old News (Score:5, Insightful)

    by elliotj ( 519297 ) <slashdot AT elliotjohnson DOT com> on Monday March 10, 2003 @08:34AM (#5475696) Homepage
    Hey guys, MacSlash [macslash.org] called, they want their story from February 10th back.

    The xServe RAID box has been out for a month. Why is this "news"?

  • Not news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nexum ( 516661 ) on Monday March 10, 2003 @09:44AM (#5476038)
    Nope, this is *not* news, the XRaid is over a month old now.

    I think Apple are approaching this carefully, there aren't a huge number of orders, and they know that in the server area they have to be established and seen as a long term player to gain serious marketshare. So they're doing this humbly and slowly, making sure that they get things right.

    They are *not* betting the farm on the server solutions, they are great products and I think its good to see the company diversifying both above (XServe XRaid) and below (iPod) their usual established market area.

    -Nex
  • Although I guess you'd have to be a Mac user to actually discern between the real Mac stories and the stories submitted by people not in tune with the releases.
  • ...until now! It's the first time it's appeared on their main site page, however.

    Anyway, aren't you going to debate over ATA100 vs. SCSI or something? ;)

  • Before the trolls get started... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Llywelyn ( 531070 ) on Monday March 10, 2003 @03:28PM (#5478832) Homepage
    With the "that's so expensive! You can get more storage than that for $11k and more an actual computer to boot!"

    This is not an offering from Apple that is designed to compete for storage in the home, except maybe for those individuals running a small business. This is not just a "bunch of storage," this is a high-quality server solution that is designed to compete with Sun and IBM.

    This thing has a battery backup module for the cache, dual and *independant* RAID controllers, redundent *cooling* (incidentally, these are self regulating as well), and redundent power supplies. It also all fits inside of a 3U case, which is phenomenal, and hot-swapable drives.

  • Good Fiber Channel pricing (Score:3, Informative)

    by TexTex ( 323298 ) on Monday March 10, 2003 @07:34PM (#5480891)
    One thing that is rather cool to see is Apple's pricing of their fiber channel card.

    500 bucks...

    If indeed this is a standard fiber channel pipe, that's a bargain. Most of the SANs I've seen run around $2000 for such a card, and it makes adding fiber worthwhile on a desktop G4 even if you need the bandwidth.
  • Slashdot.org has a much larger and broader audience, than Macslash, so with that in mind having this re-run article gives more PR for Apple's X-RAID Product, yes?
  • If you don't read macslash and you do read apple.slashdot, then this is news. I of course load www.apple.com and store.apple.com 2 or 3 times a week, so its not news to me. Don't assume everyone reads the same websites that you do, because they don't. I emailed the link to this /. article to someone at work yesterday, and it was news to them. Before you bash people, think about it.
    (Don't flag me as FLAMEBAIT please! :)
    --
    Nate Hart -
    (you figure it out)
    http://bonez.net/

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