Xserve RAID Gets Quiet Boost

Nice. I was wondering how long it would take them to put 750 GB drives in the Xserve RAID.

We have 2 Xserve RAIDs at work, and man, they're starting to look a little puny. The first one at 2.5 TB seemed astoundingly huge. Then we added the second one a year later at 5.6 TB and we were drowning in disk space. Between the two of them, both configured with 5+0 RAID, we have about 6.4 TB usable space and about 2 TB free.

Now a single unit dwarfs that. I suppose it won't be long until the 1 TB drives are out, giving it up to 14 TB in one unit.

Heh, I still remember looking into getting a 200 GB RAID system for about $50k several years ago. Glad we were able to hold out for the Xserve RAIDs. They've been rock solid.

They have not updated the hardware page yet to 10.5 TB

http://www.apple.com/hardware/

BTW do they still refuse to sell empty ADM's?

Rocketman

They have not updated the hardware page yet to 10.5 TB

http://www.apple.com/hardware/

BTW do they still refuse to sell empty ADM's?

Rocketman

I almost posted saying, "now they have", but then I realized what you're talking about. I haven't seen that page in over a year, I just type in www.apple.com/whatever and forget the rest. :)

Apple also updated the xserve BTO order page. Previously (at least as of 2 weeks ago) the largest memory size you could BTO was 16GB. They increased that to 32GB - at an extra cost of $23699.

Why is this a Page 2 story? I mean... it's real news, right? Not just wild speculation. I would have liked to see a small blurb on Page 1.

This small update made sense though.. those 750's have been around for a long time now..

Why is this a Page 2 story? I mean... it's real news, right? Not just wild speculation. I would have liked to see a small blurb on Page 1.

This small update made sense though.. those 750's have been around for a long time now..

Because most people probably don't care about xServe RAIDs. If this was on the main page, a lot of people would be asking "Why is this on page 1?" Page 1=more interesting stories (speculation or not), page 2=mildly interesting, but still newsworthy.

Anyone know how much the speed of xServe RAIDS would increase (if at all) if it went to SATA or SAS? Also, how much speed difference would we get between 7,200 RPM drives vs. 10,000 vs. 15,000? Just curious how those would affect throughput (actual Megabytes/second instead of theoretical).

Because most people probably don't care about xServe RAIDs. If this was on the main page, a lot of people would be asking "Why is this on page 1?" Page 1=more interesting stories (speculation or not), page 2=mildly interesting, but still newsworthy.

Anyone know how much the speed of xServe RAIDS would increase (if at all) if it went to SATA or SAS? Also, how much speed difference would we get between 7,200 RPM drives vs. 10,000 vs. 15,000? Just curious how those would affect throughput (actual Megabytes/second instead of theoretical).

I think the FC bus is only 400mb/s max.

The rumored Xserve RAID with 6 FC connections (per side) would not be saturated at such a low bandwidth. Low being a relative term of course :)

The main advantage to SAS is for transactions like a website, accounting database, sales site, iTunes server like stuff. The advantage to a (unreleased Apple) multi-channel FC with SATA and ZFS is the ability to serve large files like HD videos, scientific datasets, medical images, and other large file heavy transaction applications.

Rocketman

I think the FC bus is only 400mb/s max.

Did you mean megabits (mb) or megabytes (mB)? There's an eightfold difference.

Apple also updated the xserve BTO order page. Previously (at least as of 2 weeks ago) the largest memory size you could BTO was 16GB. They increased that to 32GB - at an extra cost of $23699.

p.s. I think this is an indication of what can be expected on the MacPro side with the additions of cores in the next update or two.

I think the FC bus is only 400mb/s max.

The rumored Xserve RAID with 6 FC connections (per side) would not be saturated at such a low bandwidth. Low being a relative term of course :)

The main advantage to SAS is for transactions like a website, accounting database, sales site, iTunes server like stuff. The advantage to a (unreleased Apple) multi-channel FC with SATA and ZFS is the ability to serve large files like HD videos, scientific datasets, medical images, and other large file heavy transaction applications.

Rocketman

Actually, my question was, at the moment, the xServe RAID uses Ultra ATA/100. I want to know how much of an increase (if any) if it used SATA/SAS instead of UltraATA. I know SATA & SAS has a higher theoretical bandwidth, but what about in real life? Also, how much faster would having a 15,000 RPM drive be compared to a 10,000 and 7,200 RPM drive? Probably wouldn't make too much of a difference unless it was under a heavy load, but I'd like to see how they all compare in real life. Maybe copying a 50 GB file or something.