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Technology (Apple) Businesses Apple Hardware Technology

University Chooses Apple RAID for Linux Cluster 68

Posted by Hemos from the mucho-storage dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A Linux World article describes how Swinburne University chose Apple's Xserve RAID to add storage to it's Dell linux cluster, as it was the cheapest solution. Apple was sceptical about its RAID system working with Linux, but the system was up and running in 15 minutes."
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University Chooses Apple RAID for Linux Cluster More

University Chooses Apple RAID for Linux Cluster

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  • Compression - WOW! wait, I mean HOW? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by seigniory ( 89942 ) <bigfriggin@m[ ]om ['e.c' in gap]> on Monday October 20, 2003 @11:29AM (#7260636)
    "According to Bailes, the centre records 13TB of data per day, which gets processed in real time down to 30GB and then compressed further to 3KB."

    OK, can someone to explain to me that either yes, there is a lot of redundant data that can have crazy-good compression rates, or that no, this quote is wrong...
    • I'm sure they meant 3GB as I know most non-normalized data generally can be compressed 10:1.
    • Hey, you can store a lot of compressed pictures of polar bears in blizzards in 3KB!

    • Re:Compression - WOW! wait, I mean HOW? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @12:11PM (#7261021) Homepage Journal
      I'm sure that they are not processing web traffic statistics, but that is an application that mirrors the data needs in a similar situation. I imagine many other applications have similar data needs. No doubt, the 3K is not re-expandable to 13TB, and probably neither is the 30GB.

      For instance, I might be generating 10GB of logs per day. To save disk space, the streams might be written out with gzip compression (it's write-only, after all), or I might rewrite the formats to conserve space - write the IP addresses in 4 bytes rather than writing out the full ASCII dotted quad, etc. Since it's text and the format is highly redundant, it compresses very well.. I might end up with a 50-500MB log file depending on how things are done. At the end of the day, I could process the statistics and generate report/archive data of several KB that retains all the important data I want to keep from the logs.

      ~GoRK
    • A long time ago, in a job far, far away, I had to deal with some radio astronomy data.

      The raw data was pretty much noise (quasar output).There were two data streams, from opposite sides of the earth, listening to the same noise source)

      The data (after extraction) was very, very small. I can't recall if it would have been on the order of Tb to Kb but it might well have been. We didn't have that much storage, so we had to compute (using custom hardware) in near real time.

      With appropriate temporary storage,

  • mmmm....Xserve (Score:3, Funny)

    by GreatTeacherMusashi ( 717399 ) <<ude.tv> <ta> <thginka>> on Monday October 20, 2003 @11:35AM (#7260683) Homepage Journal
    Those things are soooo yummy, if I had a million dollars, some of it would go to an xserve array, just for fun, it'd be like the equivalent of some movie star buying like, some diamond coffee table or something "oh haha, and yeah that's my Xserve over there, oh no I don't really use it much, it's just to brighten the room up"
    • Bling Bling factor?
      http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php ?term=Bli ng-Bling

      -joe
    • ... the ocean you hear? No my dear, we're fully three miles from the ocean here. You must be hearing my blessed. Xserve. Turn it off? Shall we go dancing my pet? ...
  • I wonder why apple would doubt that it would work (other then to try and get them to by Xservers with the Xserver RAIDs), they just use fiberchannel, which is a standard.
    • It's most likely a dealing with a branch office of a branch office problem. Swinburne is in Melbourne, Australia, while Apple Australian's main office is in Sydney.

      Over the years Apple Australia has managed to hire a few people technically competent to think outside the square, but more often, after such people have moved on to bigger challenges, they are left with a team which operates almost entirely on received wisdom.

  • Xserve is cheap (Score:5, Informative)

    by joshsnow ( 551754 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @11:41AM (#7260741) Journal
    This topic reminded me of an article in the print version of UK mag PC Pro [pcpro.co.uk] by Jon Honeyball. He tells of one of his (consultancy) "clients" looking for a SAN/RAID solution from Dell and EMC, which would cost 120,000.

    Aparently, Apples offering was 2TB storage for 9000 - vs 80,000 for 2TB from Dell/EMC.

    In the article he says;The obvious question is whether you can put fibre channel cards into your Windows servers and connect them up too. Apple tells me this is possible The idea being to use the storage for SQL*Server databases and the like.

    I'm not surprised this is such a good solution for use with Linux.
    • Aparently, Apples offering was 2TB storage for 9000 - vs 80,000 for 2TB from Dell/EMC.

      I would propose that a price difference of that magnitude would indicate the Dell/EMC product is "doing a bit more".

      If the Dell/EMC box is stacked full of 15k RPM SCSI disks and a gig of mirrored cache, for example, then it's going to cost more because it's going to have better performance and reliability.

      • But when all you want is 2TB of storage which can sustain 100MB/s and has a good service contract from a company who isn't going out of business tomorrow...

        then you can pay 9,000 or 90,000

  • Xserve RAID in non-Apple environments (Score:5, Informative)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Monday October 20, 2003 @11:46AM (#7260786)
    There's a new community site called alienRAID.org [alienraid.org] that focuses on supporting Xserve RAID in non-Apple and mixed environments. It's likely to be helpful to people interested in deploying Xserve RAID in conjunction with other platforms.

  • Cheapest redundant solution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @11:55AM (#7260885)
    Before a bunch of silly gooses shout they can get the same storagein their generic Linux boxes please lets note that were comparing reliable redundant systems.

    the X raid has dual redundant power supplies, redundant fans, dual redundant raid controllers, dual redundant and DEDICATED processors, dual redundant ethernet connection, dual redundant fiber channel outputs. it has separate busses and controllers for each ATI hard disk, and the busses to the disks are high speed. all of the disks are hot swapable self contained pluggin units. and it all sits in 3U. (plus another U for whatever server is receiving the fiber channel). All the software on board is tuned to the task and other than the web admin, the box has no extraneous services.

    also the raid is Hardware raid 5,1,0 not software. other than a netapp at 25x the price, there's nothing that comes close.

    • Re:Cheapest redundant solution (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, while there are multiple controllers and cache modules in the Xserve RAID, they are not redundant. Each controller and cache module is responsible for its own side of the enclosure. The power supplies, cooling modules, etc., are fully redundant. The RAID Admin utility (the java piece), however, can talk to both controllers through only one IP address, so in effect, the ethernet devices are sort of redundant. This is all in the PDF documentation on the website, FYI.

      (Still a good deal for the money
    • also the raid is Hardware raid 5,1,0 not software. other than a netapp at 25x the price, there's nothing that comes close.

      The only "disadvantage" of Apple's product is each individual disk is relatively slow (specs say 7200 RPM vs. 10000 to 15000 RPM for other options). Other than that, Apple really has a killer product (at least on paper...I don't have one :(

  • Kewl. Everything to make a slashdot article. (Score:5, Funny)

    by kabocox ( 199019 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @12:58PM (#7261394)
    It runs linux check.
    It has Apple. Check.
    It has a low price for server hardware. check.

    This article is hearby Slashdot approved.

  • Um, well "Duh!". (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DAQ42 ( 210845 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @01:11PM (#7261509)
    I've been booting my Linux boxes from my XServe RAID for months now. It's just a fibre array. And the XRAID Admin program is a straight Java applications so you can run it on any platform that supports Sun Java 1.4.1.

    Go figure.

    It's not rocket science. These devices have been engineered using standards of the industry.

    Doh!

  • Apple's Trojan Horse for I.T. Depts.? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Johnny Mozzarella ( 655181 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @01:15PM (#7261539)
    iTunes has been called a Trojan Horse that will slip into consumer PCs and perhaps persude them to buy an iPod or a Mac.

    Will the XServe RAID become the equivalent Trojan Horse that will slip into corporate data centers and lead to future purchases of XServes?

    I hope Apple doesn't ignore this opportunity but instead promotes the fact that the XServe RAID plays well with other systems.
  • I have picked up two hardware raid systems (Tornado) from these guys [wsm.com] for about $7K each for 2TB in RAID 5. They have worked great so far and I have not had one problem (knock on wood).

    I am aware that the apple product is theoretically a little better due to the fiber chanel over the LVD SCSI that I purchased but I think that for most (not all) people the LVD performance would be good enough.

    I personally would recomend these Tornado RAID systems to just about anyone needing a lot of storage for a small pr

  • I doubt Apple was surprised this worked (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ffakr ( 468921 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @03:24PM (#7262622) Homepage
    Apple went out of its way to describe how splendedly xServe RAID ran on Solaris, Linux, and even 2K/XP boxes at WWDC this year.
    This is the same story they've been telling since xServe RAID was shipping (and probably before that since it was pre-announced very early).

    I'm pretty sure that any doubts were from the customers or the Lunuxworld writer and not Apple. They've been trying to sell this for linux boxes. If it was 'Apple' that had doubts, then those engineers need to return to the mothership for some more training.
  • The linked article [linuxworld.com.au] quotes the tech center's director:

    "Also, at around 100Mbps read and write to disk, it is faster than our SCSI system which has an I/O of 50Mbps"

    Never mind the whole base-2/base-10 "mebibyte" business... why can't people learn that the case of the "b"/"B" is significant!? Clearly he meant megaBytes, not bits.

    By the way, Apple advertises [apple.com] the Xserve RAID's throughput in excess of 200MBps.

    - Peter
    • Actually that's what I thought first also,...

      100 Mbit is only 12.5 MB/sec... pretty crappy for an IDE disk, but they did say per drive.

      The xServe RAID has two banks of 7 drives. Each bank has a 2000 Mbit fibre channel connection. So, let's do the math.

      2 Gbit / 7 drives is a max bandwidth of around 286 Mbit per drive.
      They quoted 100 Mbit sustained per drive.

      100 MB/sec x 7 drives would be 700 MB/sec of sustained bandwidth (not to mention that IDE drives don't sustain 100MB/sec.
      700 MB/sec is 5.6Gbit/sec,
  • Is it me, or is there really something wrong with the total cost given in the article?

    Here is my back of the envelope calculation:

    • $65,994 2.52 TB Xserve RAID (6x$10999 [apple.com])
      $45,117 into someone else's pocket
      --------
      $111,111 Subtotal
      -$11,111 Education and volume discount (10%)
      --------
      $100,000 Total

    Where did I make the mistake?

  • During the conference held couple weeks back at Melbourne Uni, the guy from Apple Australia explained to us as to why Swinburne TAFE decided to use the XRAIDS. As it's the only one that supports IDE (He went on to say that the whole reason why RAID is there for is to reduce the costs, yet others use the more expensive SCSI drives) it was the cheapest way to transfer the data from Parkes to Hawthorn. They basically get a van, pack the HDs onto it once the data is collected, and drive back to Melbourne, which

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