NEW TODAY: Mac Pro Hardware RAID BTO option!

[slughead]

Original posting: The US Apple store isn't up yet but the UK one shows at least ONE Update today:
UK STORE IMAGE

UPDATE:

US store was updated. The option is $999.

Christ that's overpriced, I bought a RAID card for a mac pro for less than $200.. However, this is likely the only S.M.A.R.T. and bootable RAID card available for the mac pro, so you be the judge.

UPDATE 2:
From Apple.com
(2) Testing by Apple in July 2007 using preproduction Mac Pro RAID Card and software, and shipping 3.0GHz 8-core Mac Pro units. Testing conducted using Iometer 2006.07.27 with a 30-sec ramp-up, 5-min run, 512KB request size, and 4 outstanding IOs. System configured with the OS and test volume on a single RAID volume. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of Mac Pro RAID Card. (3) Supports Mac OS X only.

It looks like it wont work in bootcamp! WATCH OUT!

Update 3

It looks like it works with the internal hard drive bays, even though it's PCIe.

[pb468]

at £700 i'll pass, thanks.

[Multimedia]

Originally Posted by pb468

at £700 i'll pass, thanks.

Is there no third party with a solution for less than $1K? That seems very steep to me.

[CanadaRAM]

Originally Posted by Multimedia

Is there no third party with a solution for less than $1K? That seems very steep to me.

There are option but not bootable...
The implication is that Apple's raid hardware has bootstrap firmware to allow OSX to be booted.

[Wild-Bill]

Yeah..... I'm sure orders will be flying off the shelves for that..... /sarcasm.

What a disappointment......

[pengu]

so how long before someone uses this to add 4 more drives to a mac pro? or does it route all data via the PCIe lane to the standard sata ports?

[slughead]

This is like a kid's birthday when the father walks in the room with something behind his back.

Little Jimmy is standing there, shaking in anticipation.

"Now Jimmy, you've been a good little boy this year and I've got something really nice for you"

Jimmy is ecstatic now, almost unable to control his glee.

Father hands it over: a couple of playing cards and some tape to secure them on his bike spokes, and a bill for $1000.

Immediately after the color drains from Jimmy's face, the father says "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" and kicks him square in the balls.

As the boy writhes in pain on the ground, the father gives Sally a new iMac though it's not even her birthday.

Yeah. It's like that.

[Multimedia]

ROTFLMAO Slughead. You took the words right out of my mouth.

[synth3tik]

damn! I would love a hardware raid controller but the $1000 price tag is to much to add to a machine that I have already invested $5500 into. There are less expencive RAID controllers out there, but for now my software RAID works out just fine.

Good catch though.

[G4DP]

Is anyone else starting to feel that those of us who want to purchase a "new" pro workstation are being taken for a ride?

So in it's one year existance what change has their been. Two BTO options that add $2500 (£1560) to the cost.

I was hoping in vain for some sort of "actual" upgrade to the Mac Pro today - even if it was only to bring the video cards into this year. Guess the bank will be earning from y money for a while longer instead of old Stevo.

Over all I think today was a joke. The new iMac is horrible, looks like it was designed with a marker pen in a pub. I just laughed when I saw that keyboard. I though he was taking the @@@@ at first - should have known better, I know.

Maybe we'll get something at MacWorld. Not holding my breath though.

[slughead]

Originally Posted by pengu

so how long before someone uses this to add 4 more drives to a mac pro? or does it route all data via the PCIe lane to the standard sata ports?

It looks to circumvent the on-board controller and it hooks to the internal hard drive bays (read description carefully).

Interesting. Overpriced, but interesting.

[krunk]

Mac Pro = Oldest PC being sold as new evah.

[Wild-Bill]

Originally Posted by slughead

This is like a kid's birthday when the father walks in the room with something behind his back.

Little Jimmy is standing there, shaking in anticipation.

"Now Jimmy, you've been a good little boy this year and I've got something really nice for you"

Jimmy is ecstatic now, almost unable to control his glee.

Father hands it over: a couple of playing cards and some tape to secure them on his bike spokes, and a bill for $1000.

Immediately after the color drains from Jimmy's face, the father says "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" and kicks him square in the balls.

As the boy writhes in pain on the ground, the father gives Sally a new iMac though it's not even her birthday.

Yeah. It's like that.

THANK YOU Slughead!!! You just brought a smile to my face, after what has amounted to a disappointing and aggravating day.

The Mac Pro is officially the oldest chicken in the coop now. I'd like to meet the financial genius in Apple's supply chain that thinks delaying orders for 7-10 weeks so they can "bulk" order x1900's from Foxconn is cost-effective.


My ATI Card is Pretty Ridiculously Old

[MacsRgr8]

Not cheap, but we do now have a hardware RAID option. Same goes for the Xserve by the way.

Too bad only Mac OS X is supported, and not Windows (through Boot Camp) yet.

[GregD]

Seriously you would think they would add the possibility of a new pro graphics card a year later... but no.. a RAID card... very useful im sure apple

Is the new ATI iMac gcard better than the current Mac Pro ones?

[ChrisA]

This is really the lowest price way to buy this level of performance. How else can you get it for $1K? Ok you can buy a cheep PC, install BSD UNIX on it then implement RAID there and then connect it to your Mac Pro. But connect it by what? Gigabit Eithernet is 4X to slow.

Yes there are cheaper RAID cards for PCs but are they really hardware RAID? Look carefully and you will see the low priced cards do the work in software inside the driver.

And don't forget the battery backup. You can't implemnt a true hardware raid and truely cover the semantics of the fsync() system call without the battery.

This will help people who are editing several tracks of HD video

[AidenShaw]

Originally Posted by ChrisA

This is really the lowest price way to buy this level of performance. How else can you get it for $1K? Ok you can buy a cheep PC, install BSD UNIX on it then implement RAID there and then connect it to your Mac Pro. But connect it by what? Gigabit Eithernet is 4X to slow.

Yes there are cheaper RAID cards for PCs but are they really hardware RAID? Look carefully and you will see the low priced cards do the work in software inside the driver.

And don't forget the battery backup. You can't implemnt a true hardware raid and truely cover the semantics of the fsync() system call without the battery.

This will help people who are editing several tracks of HD video

Tom's Hardware review of PCIe SATA RAID controllers

http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata2-9650.asp
http://store.3ware.com/?category=10&subcategory=8
http://store.3ware.com/?category=2&subcategory=6


(Note the PowerPC processor for handling the RAID)


I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's just rebranding a 3Ware card (and doubling the price)... The Xserve G5 RAID card was a Megaraid rebrand, but I don't see anything on the LSI Logic website (no PCIe SATA listed).

[freiheit]

Originally Posted by ChrisA

Yes there are cheaper RAID cards for PCs but are they really hardware RAID? Look carefully and you will see the low priced cards do the work in software inside the driver.

And don't forget the battery backup. You can't implemnt a true hardware raid and truely cover the semantics of the fsync() system call without the battery.

This will help people who are editing several tracks of HD video

Indeed, this is not a "now you too can have RAID-0 on your home PC" device. This is a professional level device where the difference between $400 and $1K is fairly negligible compared to the performance boost it will provide to those who need it. And I've not seen one <$400 RAID card which offers a battery backup of any sort.

Many of us can get by just fine with a simple XOR engine for RAID-5 and no on-board cache (like, say, the higher-end Promise RAID cards) but we're not doing the kind of work that Apple's card targets. We're not running in a server environment where if the power goes out to the data center we still need to be sure our load-balanced, SQL server based web site stays up and running. If the power goes out in my home, my UPS kicks in and gives me enough time to shut my system down and wait for power to be restored. I might not get that last bit of a download done until later that evening and I won't miss it.

Still, though, as a Mac Pro owner I wish there had always been at least hardware RAID-1 built-in.

[ktlx]

Originally Posted by freiheit

This is a professional level device where the difference between $400 and $1K is fairly negligible compared to the performance boost it will provide to those who need it. And I've not seen one <$400 RAID card which offers a battery backup of any sort.

The 3ware 9650SE-4LPML is fairly easy to find for <$350. In fact, Apple's specs almost completely mirror the 3ware 9650SE-4LPML for almost three times the price.

[SMM]

Originally Posted by Wild-Bill

THANK YOU Slughead!!! You just brought a smile to my face, after what has amounted to a disappointing and aggravating day.

The Mac Pro is officially the oldest chicken in the coop now. I'd like to meet the financial genius in Apple's supply chain that thinks delaying orders for 7-10 weeks so they can "bulk" order x1900's from Foxconn is cost-effective.


My ATI Card is Pretty Ridiculously Old

You MS/Dell trolls are really in deep doodoo to be posting this kind of drivel. If you do not like the product, move on.

[cp2222]

How much performance boost are we talking here over the software RAID I am currently running? I currently have two 500 gig drives RAID 0 in my mac pro and it seems extremely fast. I have not really had a moment where I have felt like - man this is slow. Granted, having to flash my firmware from an external drive that I had to install ANOTHER copy of mac os x on instead of being able to flash it directly from the RAID partition, since it can't do that -- was completely retarded those two times... but even still -- I'm not sure that $1000 is really worth anything it is going to offer? All I wanted was a new graphics card since everyone that has the x1900 reports it overheats their machine and is totally 18 months old now.... That is just crazy. Anyway....

[Wild-Bill]

Originally Posted by SMM

You MS/Dell trolls are really in deep doodoo to be posting this kind of drivel. If you do not like the product, move on.

Whatever.... move along now.

[RichP]

Well, that makes it official. We aren't going to see a MacPro update till the end of the year (post-Leopard).

[ktlx]

Originally Posted by cp2222

How much performance boost are we talking here over the software RAID I am currently running? I currently have two 500 gig drives RAID 0 in my mac pro and it seems extremely fast.

For the number of drives we're talking about (four), no hardware RAID is going to help for 0, 1, 0+1 or JBOD. In fact, you might even see worse performance because you're not using the Intel SATA built into the chipset.

The point of the card is for bootable RAID 5 since I don't think Apple's software RAID supports RAID 5. Since software RAID 5 doesn't exist, obvious this solution is faster than it. I don't believe any of the other "RAID" cards for the Mac Pro's are bootable.

[puuukeey]

as a life long mac user whose always paid top dollar for his computers, someone who is in the market for a raid system, and as someone who IS a media professional.

potentially paying $9,000 for a computer with nothing on/in it is... well... not atractive.