StorageMojo reported last June 19th a rumor that Apple’s Xserve RAID would bite the dust. And now, exactly 8 months later, they’ve pulled the plug.
I saw a wall of Xserves and Xserve RAIDs at NAB last year and they were, without a doubt, the prettiest server/storage combo in the world. Brushed stainless steel, blue LEDs and the symmetrical installation looked like Hollywood’s idea of a computer. (Although the server room in Live Free or Die Hard is even crazier.)
Replaced by the Promise Vtrak
Not as pretty but more functional. The Xserve RAID didn’t have dual-redundant active/active controllers with failover, so users had to rely on software mirroring. An OK solution, but not a great one.
Xserve RAID’s big advantage, other than great looks, was price. A quarter the price of other FC RAID kit.
But with the Promise Vtrak arrays, Apple can now quote $1.12 per GB in 26 TB chunks. Pretty good! On a 4 Gbit FC backbone, they can deliver 6 streams of 8-bit uncompressed HD video. Pretty fast!
The Promise kit is fully redundant with hot-swap components. Not the sort of thing that Apple should spend money engineering. And it looks like it is packaged in a nice Xyratex enclosure, the standard of the industry.
Update: One commenter assures us that Promise doesn’t use Xyratex enclosures. I guess there are just so many ways to stick 16 drives into a 3U 19″ rack.
There also seems to be some angst over the apparent outsourcing to Promise as opposed to the Apple label Xserve RAID. Make no mistake, Apple outsourced the Xserver RAID as well to someone who did Apple’s industrial design. With Promise they are just making that apparent, probably because they get a better deal. But you still buy it from the Apple store, not Promise.
As an aside, Steve Jobs has many fine qualities, but his appreciation for how storage can extend Apple’s business is on a par with Scott McNealy’s – i.e. clueless. So it goes. End update.
The StorageMojo take
This move strengthens Apple’s thrust into professional video production and film editing. Their software-only competitors should be sweating, since Apple keeps throwing more functionality into Final Cut Studio, like Color, for very competitive prices.
With the release of Final Cut Server, expected shortly, Apple will have a storage-intensive software infrastructure that should meet the needs of many TV, cable and production studios. With low-cost storage they only make the business case more persuasive.
Apple will be moving a lot more terabytes this year.
Comments welcome, of course.
Update 2: I’ll be adding the Object Matrix price list to Price Lists shortly. They’ve built a cluster storage solution for Apple’s Final Cut Server archives. If you are waiting impatiently for Final Cut Server to ship you’ll want to check them out. End update 2.
I just cancelled my order for two more XServe RAIDs. Too bad for Apple, and us. We have about 10 installed, and spare parts.
Can someone recommend a top-tier storage vendor that doesn’t charge 2x-10x what Apple did for storage, and whose product works on Macs, Linux, Solaris, and (oh yeah) Windows?
Yes, we were happily using XServe RAID on all those platforms.
Apple’s support wasn’t perfect, but it was an order of magnitude better than any second-tier (or lower) vendor we’ve dealt with over the years. Most wouldn’t give you to time of day for non-Windows platforms. We have no experience with Promise, and their name unfortunately violates one of my rules of IT — “Don’t buy promises.”
1) not a xyratex box
2) for the guy who wants to not buy promises. If it is good enough for apple- it is good enough for you. just go to the source
Rex, I’d take a close look at the products that replaced the Xserve RAID. The pricing is excellent and they are supported by Apple, same as the Xserve RAID.
My guess is that Apple wanted to get them announced before the imminent Final Cut Server and Final Cut Archive announcement, rather than announce them together and have people connect dots that aren’t connected. The new management console is web-based rather than a Java app. I assume that will make multi-vendor management easier.
If anyone else sees a similar config – 30 TB for $1.12 – let me know.
Robin
I have 4 XServe RAIDs in production. They proved far more reliable than the NetApp F760 cluster they replaced, and actually cost less each than one year of NetApp’s support. More than the low price of the arrays themselves, the low cost of support was the big news: 3 years for $1000 per unit. Given that drives are the component most likely to fail and their cost is assumed by the drive vendors, the high support cost of storage gear is unjustifiable. It looks like the Promise arrays include 3 years’ warranty.
If anyone else sees a similar config – 30 TB for $1.12 – let me know.
I apologize for tooting our own horn here, please delete if inappropriate.
Our large 24, 36, and 48 TB units are all under $1/GB, and will happily talk to Linux, Windows, Solaris, and if the Mac uses standard NFS, CIFS, or iSCSI, it will talk to that as well. Over GbE, 10 GbE, or IB. Choice of management software if you want to run it as an appliance (OpenFiler, and if enough interest NexentaStor), or a Server (Linux, Windows, Solaris).
Great stuff as always, Robin. Goes to show that being pretty is a great strategy for consumers, but not so much for business. A smart and pragmatic decision by Apple.
The A/V production space is huge. Apple’s wise to do what it takes to stay in the game.
Isilon’s products are already used extensively with Final Cut. No dropped frames with multiple streams of DV25, DV50, DVCPRO-100, ProRes, uncompressed SD, etc. And it scales in a single filesystem. Price-wise, I’ve quoted against Apple on a number of these, and the pricing always comes out competitive against XSAN/XServe RAID. With Apple you’ve got to license all the clients, buy the metadata controllers, license the metadata controllers, buy fibre channel network infrastructure, etc., etc. You can’t just focus on the cost of the raw disk. Works with Apple, Windows, Linux, Solaris, Irix, etc. out of the box.
Robin,
Great data, excellent writing AS USUAL. One of the most coherent writers in the storage space.
EXCEPT, Apple developed the the entire Xserve RAID internally from commodity OEM parts, the management processor was Apple programmed and designed (Built on Airport Base Station Technology) .
This was why the Engineering cost of redundant controllers was simply not happening, especially competing with the iPhone, intel Macs, iPod, etc.
The promise box looks tasty. Is this the same promise as the inexpensive RAID cards OEM in so many low end servers?
–s
Well, for the Higher Ed community (not everyone) it’s hard to beat Sun’s X4500 + NexentaStor. Well under $1/gig with SMB, iSCSI, NFS and more. On the performance side you’d have to be looking at 10Gbe for any kind of SAN type access. Still, a great pricepoint, simple management and so far, quite reliable.
D