The RAID system has disappeared from the Apple Store shortly after the company announced the Xsan 2. Industry analysts do not believe the cancellation will have a negative impact on the company’s business market.
Apple has reached an agreement with Promise Technology for its RAID systems to be qualified for use with Xsan 2, so that users are not left out of supply. Apple indicates that Promise products offer the features that their users have always been asking for, as well as offering significantly better performance.
According to statements by Apple spokesman Anuj Nayar to Macworld, “We have decided to focus our efforts where we can add more value, with the Xserve, the Xsan and Leopard Server.”
Users who already have an Xserve RAID can still continue to add Apple storage. Although the RAID system has been discontinued, the company still continues to sell modules for it.
According to Nayar, “The Xserve RAID is still available while supplies last, and we continue to sell 300 and 750 GB disk modules. For new RAID purchases we recommend the Promise VTrack E-Class subsystem.”
Each VTrak RAID 3U subsystem supports up to 16 3.5-inch SATA or SAS drives and an expansion chassis that can accommodate another 16 SATA or SAS drives, with capacities up to 24TB per configuration. The system also ships with redundant RAID controllers, 4 Gb Fiber Channel connections to the host, RAID 5 and RAID 6 support, and dedicated global spare disks.
According to Promise, the VTrak E-Class RAID subsystem offers unprecedented performance for general-purpose and video storage workloads with servers, reaching 1400MB / s throughput for sequential read and 617MB per second throughput of sequential write in a RAID 5 configuration with redundant controllers. When configured with Apple’s Xsan 2 cluster file system and Final Cut Studio 2 video suite, the 32-disc Vtrak system offers up to six uncompressed 8-bit high definition video streams, 22 ProRes HQ video streams HD compressed and 26 uncompressed 8-bit SD video streams.
The Vtrak system is available in the Apple Store for a price of 12,699 EUR.
