Apple satisfies RAID storage appetite

Apple has updated its Xserve RAID storage system to deliver 5.6 terabytes of storage capacity to satisfy the needs of enterprises with big plans to expand their storage space in the near future.

In addition, Apple is also planning to expand its support for storage set-ups with certification from Cisco and SUSE Linux and optimise the system to work with its Xsan Storage Area Network file system.

Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, said: "Xserve RAID features a breakthrough, high-performance storage architecture that is the perfect complement to any Xserve G5 system. We're now offering more capacity at an even lower prices per gigabyte in a system that has been optimised and certified to run with leading enterprise applications and systems."

Fourteen independent 400GB Ulta ATA drive channels provide up to 5.6TB of storage capacity, while the dual independent RAID controllers with 512MB cache per controller offer sustained throughput of over 380MBps-high enough to support two streams of uncompressed 10-bit HD video editing using protected RAID level 5.

Chris Hanson, the director of Web Technologies at Seitel, which is a leading seismic data to the oil and gas industry, said: "Apple's Xserve RAID systems deliver enterprise-class storage at a dramatically lower cost compared to competitive offerings. We're planning to add 30 terabytes of the updates Xserve RAID storage over the next six months, bringing our total capacity to 100 terabytes."

Xserve RAID connects to any Xserve server or Power Mac desktop system using the dual-channel 2GB Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X card.

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