Processor Editorial Article – Apple & The Enterprise

Moreover, the Xserve RAID, despite its price-point, compatibility with different operating systems, and Java-based administrative tools, has yet to be re-engineered since its introduction back in 2004, and so unlike the new Xserve, the Xserve RAID does not offer either SATA or SCSI configurations. “I expect that once Apple releases its new RAID system, [it] will be better than everyone else’s, but right now you have a new top-of-the-line server with an old RAID, and Apple needs to have an updated RAID to be taken seriously,” says Vitto� although he adds that he will not be surprised if Apple announces a newly configured Xserve RAID at January’s Macworld convention.

Very cool, but look at it this way. With Apple adopting intel processors, striving to be compatible, and remaining competitive, I suspect they might start making in-roads in the near future. Certainly, I’d have no problem buying an Apple Xserve box and storage array for a cheap departmental file server, particularly if I wanted it to work with the graphics departments macs and windows servers, where the filer works but not quite as well as I know the Xserve would without the cost.

Bare in mind internal costs for EMC storage per gigabyte can be horrific like £50/90 per GB, and the problem with the filer/shared file servers is that it’s shared infrastructure, it’s storage that no one pays for, it’s free storage that IT has to provide at a loss, bring on 7TB for $13000 non replicated storage, free up that valuable EMC or that filer that’s full of application data that no one wants to delete.

Tweet This Post 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 11:53 pm and is filed under Consolidation, Servers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.