March 2004 Apple Xserve RAID - Update
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Apple – March 2004 Apple Xserve RAID - Update Polishing the Apple • Global drive hot sparing per controller In just under nine months, Apple has made significant • Passive data path mid-plane. strides with, and developed significant solutions for, their Xserve RAID product The company’s first Xserve RAID The system also supports multiple RAID levels through both product announced in March of 2003 was a 3U appliance hardware and software. The back of the array has two 2GB housing 2.5TB of raw capacity with 180Gb drives priced at FC SFP connections for high-speed host links. roughly $4/Gb. Now, Apple has implemented 250Gb drives in their latest system, giving them 3.5TB of raw capacity in On the software side, the management console is true to the same 3U footprint, while lowering the cost in just under Apple form. It is Java-based, easy to use, and logical; few a year by $1/Gb to roughly $3/Gb. Additionally, Apple has steps are required to configure the box. The array can be kept up their commitment to performance, delivering managed over TCP/IP with the Java console, which has the 210Mb/sec of throughput. ability to auto-discover Xserve RAID storage anywhere on the network. The console also has built-in monitoring tools The key problem we saw with Apple’s storage strategy nine for the drives, controllers and power. When a failure occurs, months ago was their lack of support and integration with the management software sends off an e-mail, telling the other storage vendor products, including backup, volume administrator that there is a problem and where it is. management, operating systems, virtualization and provisioning solutions. It looks as though they are Apple has developed their own controller failover. As long addressing these issues. While there is still a long way to as the data has been mirrored to the drives being accessed go before Apple may be viewed as the defacto datacenter by the second controller using Apple RAID, end users will storage standard, they have made significant strides in their still have data access. hardware platform and software support that give IT professionals an even greater reason to consider an Apple Apple has upgraded Apple RAID; their JAVA based storage solution, especially at the price. administrative utility that gives IT professionals the ability to segment their storage into smaller capacities. Each segment now has the ability to support up to 16 hosts Apple – Take One accessing the capacity. First, let us start by saying that the fundamentals of the ATA array have not changed from what we reported in our March of 2003 brief Apple – Take Two: the Solutions (http://enterprisestoragegroup.com/Research_Area_Briefs/a While Apple may be the self-proclaimed kings of innovation, pplexservemar.pdf). The Xserve RAID hardware is still a their storage group has it right by not trying to innovate too 3U rack storage subsystem that has two independent RAID much. Typically IT buys best-of-breed solutions, and the list controllers (battery backup sold separately), each of which of best-of-breed partners Apple has certified with their supports up to 512MB of cache. The subsystem has seven Xserve product is extensive. It consists of 11 respected drive channels per controller and each of them is connected storage vendors, including Brocade, QLogic, for switching to the drive chassis. Each drive supports 8MB of cache. (supporting 2Gb FC) Chaparral and Candara, (controllers) One subsystem supports up to 14 drives. Each subsystem Emulex, LSI and ATTO for additional hardware is designed with a number of high availability features such components. as: On the software side, Apple has also gone high class by certifying Veritas Volume Manager, probably the most noted • Dual redundant hot swappable power volume management in the industry. • Dual redundant hot swappable cooling ESG believes that all of this hard work and integration with • Dual warm swappable RAID controllers new software partners makes thie latest version of Xserve • Dual 2Gb Fibre Channel (FC) ports RAID a much stronger solution for IT professionals. 1 Who Gets the Apple? being monitored, although multiple systems can be monitored on the same RAID admin screen. Once invoked, In nine months Apple has gone from supporting only Mac to the monitoring password allows a user to monitor systems being certified with Microsoft Windows, and the RedHat, as long as the session is open. The management password, Linux and Yellow Dog Linux operating systems. This is however, is non-persistent and required for every good news because the two fastest growing operating transaction. Passwords are encrypted for security. SNMP systems in the mid-tier, which has tremendous growth monitoring is enabled via default, but can be disabled, potential, are Windows and Linux. IT administrators used to putting the system into a stealth mode, which prompts it to look to the likes of EMC, HP, Dell and LSI for ATA storage. prevent unauthorized snooping on the IP connection. This However, now Apple has entered the game as well. And, prevents any information about the Xserve RAID from being while Apple still isn’t a dual redundant system , when it published. comes to ATA storage, they check in at about two-thirds the cost of a comparable Dell system, and the Apple claims they have better performance. Pricing and Availability Apple’s latest Xserve RAID product can be purchased over One example where customers really benefit on the the web from Apple or though any one of Apple’s resellers. Microsoft side is through their integration with Windows Just like the last product announcement, the Xserve RAID 2003. IT professionals now have the opportunity to use comes in three standard configurations, and can be snapshots via the Windows OS instead of the array and customized to meet specific customer requirements. utilize the Xserve product as the target for these snapshots. Additional optional features include cache memory and Additionally, Windows snapshots are also integrated into cache battery modules. most of the Microsoft applications so IT professionals do not have to worry about integration with the Xserve product. The three capacity configurations feature: • 1 TB for $5,999 Integration and support were two areas where Apple did a • 1.75 TB for $7,499 very nice job out of the gate with the first Xserve RAID • 3.5 TB for $10,999 product. Apple still has their same $499 connectivity package consisting of a dual channel PCI Fibre Channel host bus adapter and 2 FC SFP-to-SFP interconnect The Bottom Line cables. This is where Apple gets their performance of Apple continues to be serious about the financial potential of 200mb/s. storage. On the low end, this is evidenced by the way they have increased their attach rate to their own systems in the The support and service packages have not changed either. field. Apple traditionally caters to markets which utilize a Apple service folks will arrive at the end-user site within four great deal of capacity, e.g., government, education, hours if the user is within 100 miles of a major U.S. city. At a media/entertainment and the sciences In fact, ESG predicts that the capacities in these markets will more than double cost of $1,000 for three years of service, these packages over the next year. This is good for Apple if they can grab are a good deal. the storage business in their installed base. While all the strides Apple has made in such a short period ESG believes that Apple will continue to make significant are very smart and strategic, we would not be doing them storage strides. For example, the entire iTunes music justice if we did not keep probing into “what is next?” That library (over 600TB) is on Xserve RAID. Apple has to be said, ESG believes that over the course of the next year, thinking of better ways to provide backup, storage security is going to be a big issue on everyone’s mind. management, virtualization, and even ILM for their What is Apple up to on the security front? They is very customers. Over time, if they wish to become more concerned with maintaining secure management with entrenched in the data center, they will need to fill these Xserve RAID, but are also concerned with user experience. holes. Toward this end, Xserve RAID maintains two levels of password authentication: one for monitoring, and one Author: Steve Kenniston management. The passwords are unique for each system All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise Storage Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Storage Group, Inc. and is intended only for use by Subscribers or by persons who have purchased it directly from ESG. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of the Enterprise Storage Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at (508) 482.0188. Last 2 .