Active Storage Announces 'ActiveSAN' Replacement for Xserve

[Nuvi]

This is not a replacement even for many Xsan users. It doesn't run Final Cut Server. Not excited about this.

 

[Imhotep397]

This is no good.

As many people have pointed out already this is only useful for people using XSan and more specifically Final Cut editing based studios. That's a pretty small industry sector, but it will probably work out well for Active (which is good, because at least they're trying to address some enterprise concerns) Get ready for more retarded looking Mac Pro rack mount kits.

 

[AidenShaw]

if you had more then 10 people you would just get two minis

I'm kidding ofcourse.

And 100 people you'd need 10 minis, and 1000 people 100 minis, ....

 

[xIGmanIx]

haha the funny thing is some people might take that seriously and is probably the mindset of most consumers that don't really have any experience in that space. The answer isn't taking a mac pro and making it rack mountable

It is now, you can stick two of 'em on a rack shelf next to each other.

Or you could take the guts out of the cheese grater case, build some
sideways cockamamie thing out of an Erector set and cardboard,
and whammo, 4U rackmountable mac pro.

if you are suggesting that servers don't need to be modular and redundant i would seriously be concerned with your requirements. Just because they are grouped into SAN's doesn't mean that they shouldn't have redudant power supplies, NIC cards and easily removed/replaced hard drives. who wouldn't want that as part of any serving environment and you would be hard pressed to not have that type of arch built into medium and large scaled SAN's. To suggest otherwise is to fly against the current environment to justify Apple's lack of support/presence

Ok. I'm going to give you guys all a really quick crash course of enterprise server environments.

Typically, in an enterprise environment, you want the majority of data to be specific to your company to be stored on a SAN rather than the server or servers that you are connecting to. Most of the time the servers themselves have most of their mission critical storage needs (databases, etc) stored on the SAN.

This device appears to be an easy to use replacement for existing Apple X-San hardware. It will provide companies with a large storage capacity for video/audio or databases.

Typically, you would see this scenario:

Client mac -> OS X Server -> SAN

What this means is that the machine running OS X server does not need to have redundant power supplies or dual anything. It just acts as a gateway.

For redundancy, you can have multiple servers running with load balancing or failover.

 

[MacGod]

Value Add?

I don't see the value add here. It is a cheap SAN device - doesn't even appear to do NAS operations, which would be fairly useful. Now I need to get Storage controllers for my servers and a SAN Switch.

I need a solution that offers me the OS X software and Open Directory integration for a 300 node school network without moving to a Mac Mini application or a Desktop workstation that consumes 8-10 U on its side.

This solution only gives me DISKS - Big Deal. Apple better pull their collective heads out of their butts, or I will be forced to migrate to an Active Directory system possibly coupled with LikeWise or some solution for authentication.

Sad...

On a side note - someone should have talked with the videographer of this companies 'announcement' - video was totally washed out due to recording against a picture window/slider.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

But is it a direct replacement for the XServe? Since when is a SAN a server? Maybe I don't understand what a SAN is, but...

A storage area network (SAN) is a dedicated storage network which provides access to consolidated, block level storage. SAN's primarily are used to make storage devices (such as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes) accessible to servers so that the devices appear as locally attached to the operating system. A SAN typically has its own network of storage devices that are generally not accessible through the regular network by regular devices.

So it must be a hybrid box then to be used AS a server OR a SAN box...

Still wish I had the money to get one while I still can get a new one.

 

[donmontalvo]

If by "fill the gap" you mean fill one role, yeah. If by "fill the gap" you mean AFP, iChat, Calendaring, Mail, MySQL, NetBoot, NFS, Push Notifications, Software Update, and Apache (you know, just to name a few) then um... no.

We've already migrated every service off Xserve except for these two:

NetBoot
Apple SUS

Can ActiveSAN provide these two services? If not, very slim chance we'd buy any.

Don Montalvo

 

[iPhoneCollector]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; de-de) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

does apple have some kind of a deal going on with theese guys?

 

[pancakedrawer]

newb question

Thanks for all the guys in this thread who work with servers kindly answering the questions the rest of us have regarding server hardware/software. This is not always the case with many of these threads and it's good to see.

I have another question to add. Is it possible for large server setups to be replaced by one or just a few mac pros/minis runnino osx server with the storage based in the cloud (or Apple's data centre) thus removing the need to large amounts of hot swappable power supplies/harddrives?

I was just thinking this because Apple tend to steer in the direction of the latest trends before anyone else does and thought maybe they are offering a fee based osx storage as a use for their huge data centre...

sorry if this is waaay off the mark guys

thanks

 

[fluffels]

This is awesome. Honestly the XSAN controllers needing their own Xserve allways seemed a little over-kill to me.

It might seem like overkill, until you start running an Xsan environment. Then you realise why you need all the performance and enterprise features the Xserve has.

But is it a direct replacement for the XServe? Since when is a SAN a server? Maybe I don't understand what a SAN is, but...



So it must be a hybrid box then to be used AS a server OR a SAN box...

Still wish I had the money to get one while I still can get a new one.

Still not understanding it, are we? (This is aimed at nobody specifically, just most people chiming in to this thread!)

A SAN is a network designed for high performance storage access. These days you can easily roll out a SAN solution that allows each Mac Pro connected read and write at over 800MB/s - suitable for streaming anything up to uncompressed 4K. To each workstation, simultaneously.

The SAN hardware works by separating the data and metadata (the 'pointers' telling the filesystem where each file is, how big it is, etc), usually between distinct storage pools. While you can pool everything together, it's a Very Bad Idea. With Xserve RAID (the old Apple solution) they advised putting meta data on the first two disks in your storage hardware. While that's fine if you're not hammering storage, nowadays you have to have it on a dedicated chassis if you want to get anywhere near the performance these things can offer.

The closer the metadata is to the MDC (metadata controller), the faster the SAN can perform (i.e. respond to requests) - hence the recent Active Storage innovation InnerPool, which stores said metadata on SSDs based on the MDCs fibre card itself.

SANs are fickle creatures. They require lots of attention and careful maintenance to ensure they run efficiently. One of the joys of Xsan is the fact it's not too many steps away from install the software and go - leaving you to actually administer the damn thing, which can take a considerable amount of time.

ActiveSAN is designed to function as a suitable MDC replacement for Xserve based MDCs. While I'm fully capable of StorNext admin, I'm not about to go and set it up because it takes more effort. This isn't 'who's got the biggest geek wang', it's all about efficient working. If I can buy something that I can set up and ignore, that's brilliant, something my clients would agree with.


Here's an example of a standard SAN setup in the media world (where this product is aimed):

8x 32TB RAID Chassis (each with dual redundant controllers)
Qlogic fibre switches (populated with four connections for each RAID and two for each workstation & MDC)
Ethernet switches (providing dedicated ethernet network for metadata transactions to each workstation & MDC)
2x MDCs (for redundancy)
Metadata: 1x RAID chassis with mirrored SAS drives - or - InnerPool

There we're talking 256TB of raw storage. Using RAID5, that's ± 230TB or so counting for parity data (the stuff that makes a RAID5 volume recoverable on-the-fly). You'd include hot spares too so the pools (2 per RAID) would reduce to something around the 200TB mark. Consider the fact that you can't fill a SAN more than 50% before performance takes a hit, you're talking 100TB usable.

If you're in a high performance environment dealing with editing and VFX, you could be in the millions of metadata transactions a second, meaning two beefy servers are required for serving out that data.

High availability is an absolute steadfast requirement. If a PSU blows on a Mac Pro MDC, you could be stuffed (you don't require two MDCs but it's best to have them). Anything happens, you want redundancy for as much as is technically possible.


TL;DR: A SAN != a Server. But it needs two to function properly.

Thanks for all the guys in this thread who work with servers kindly answering the questions the rest of us have regarding server hardware/software. This is not always the case with many of these threads and it's good to see.

I have another question to add. Is it possible for large server setups to be replaced by one or just a few mac pros/minis runnino osx server with the storage based in the cloud (or Apple's data centre) thus removing the need to large amounts of hot swappable power supplies/harddrives?

I was just thinking this because Apple tend to steer in the direction of the latest trends before anyone else does and thought maybe they are offering a fee based osx storage as a use for their huge data centre...

sorry if this is waaay off the mark guys

thanks

Quite a few post houses I know are moving to Mac minis for their main server services - user/group management, DNS, DHCP and the suchlike. You gain redundancy by adding a boatload of them with primary, secondary and tertiary services scattered around each.

However, for Xsan networks, "the cloud" is not a replacement, and is never likely to be. Considering the above figures, you'd never get anywhere near the performance required. In other industries maybe it would be a replacement - except for the fact that most people don't like their data going 'out of house', for security reasons.

 

[loungecorps]

jeez, they need a better video editor & camera man.

all in all, I guess i'll build a linux server my for use

 

[fluffels]

We've already migrated every service off Xserve except for these two:

NetBoot
Apple SUS

Can ActiveSAN provide these two services? If not, very slim chance we'd buy any.

Don Montalvo

ActiveSAN? No, that's not what it's designed for.


NetBoot - there are Linux based alternatives. (And Apple have open-sourced the major components)
SUS - It's not a critical service, so this is one place where a Mac mini Server would be a suitable replacement. While I'm not immediately aware of any, I'm sure there are Linux based SUS replacements available, or at least in the works.

 

[CFreymarc]

the next mac pro will be rackmountable.

+1

 

[AidenShaw]

You're describing StorNext (AKA XSAN) (a cluster file system), not a generic SAN

The SAN hardware works by separating the data and metadata (the 'pointers' telling the filesystem where each file is, how big it is, etc), usually between distinct storage pools. While you can pool everything together, it's a Very Bad Idea.

Actually, a SAN simply gives multiple systems (based on access rules controlled by the administrators) simultaneous access to block structured storage over a high-speed SAN (Storage Area Network). SANs are often Fibre Channel, but iSCSI over GbE or 10GbE is becoming popular.

Of course, simultaneous write access from multiple systems to "disks" is a Very Bad Idea unless you have a higher level software layer to synchronize access to the metadata and file systems (of course, a "file system" is a metadata contstruct). The SAN hardware does nothing to control such (possibly destructive) access - you need to run a cluster file system on all nodes using the storage.

XSAN is such a "cluster file system" software layer.

Since XSAN isn't really an Apple product, but is a rebadged StorNext system, Active can sell and support enterprise quality XSAN systems.

The [Apple] Xsan website claims complete interoperability [2] with the Quantum Corporation StorNext File System: "And because Xsan is completely interoperable with Quantum’s StorNext File System, you can even provide clients on Windows, Linux, and other UNIX platforms with direct Fibre Channel block-level access to the data in your Xsan-managed storage pool."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xsan

 

[fluffels]

^^ Yeah, misuse of one word there in an intended broad generalisation as to how a SAN (in this case an Xsan/StorNext system, seeing as that's what is in question) works so that people can understand a little more about it..


iSCSI might be becoming popular, but it has no place - yet - in my world.

 

[AidenShaw]

^^ Yeah, misuse of one word there in an intended broad generalisation as to how a SAN (in this case an Xsan/StorNext system, seeing as that's what is in question) works so that people can understand a little more about it..


iSCSI might be becoming popular, but it has no place - yet - in my world.

When the "one word" that is misused is "SAN", then it's worth a clarification.

It's obvious that "gravity" does not exist, and Newton was wrong. However, the idea of "gravity" is a useful simplification when dealing with most people.

Saying that "SAN hardware" deals with metadata is simply wrong, misleading, and doesn't help people understand - since the truth isn't much more complicated

• SAN "hardware" lets multiple systems access SAN drives (and arrays) as if they were local disks
• Cluster file systems (like StorNext/XSAN), are software products that synchronize access to those disks so that multiple systems can read and write to the same file systems safely

When I was in grad school I taught many undergraduate physics classes. I understand the concept of simplifying the lesson even at the expense of some truth (you start with "gravity", and after a couple of years you bring in special relativity, and a year or two later you deal with general relativity).

You had a nice description of XSAN, but you called it a description of SAN - I simply wanted to clarify that a bit. Especially important since many SANs do not use a StorNext-like cluster file system. They'll often give a system exclusive access to the disks/arrays, and if the system dies there will be a "failover" sequence to give the replacement system exclusive access to the same filesystem.

In the case of virtual machines migrating between host systems, the action is a suspend of the VM, a disconnect of the SAN volumes, a reconnect of the SAN volumes to a new VM instance on the new host, and a resume of the VM. The VM is unaware that IO nnnn occurred from one host and IO nnnn+1 was on a different host system. (For enterprise virtualization, this ability is crucial - the SAN makes the VM's virtualized disk environment independent of the host server that the VM happens to be running on at the moment.)

Some hypervisors para-virtualize SAN disks so that the performance of a VM is almost the same as a native OS instance on the same hardware.

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

We've already migrated every service off Xserve except for these two:

NetBoot
Apple SUS

Can ActiveSAN provide these two services? If not, very slim chance we'd buy any.

Don Montalvo

I'm in the same boat. I run everything on Windows 2008R2 now except NetBoot and Apple SUS. Apple SUS I can live without but not Netboot.

 

[z3r0]

Would Gluster Storage/GlusterFS accomplish the same thing as XSAN?

http://gluster.com/community/documentation/index.php/Gluster_Storage_Platform

Nice GUI too. Free.

-z3r0

 

[plutonium]

You guys are making my ears bleed! How about one of you brainiacs explain what the hell a Xsan Metadata Controller is. I've administrated a Linux server for many years so I have some familiarity with the basic setup and operation of a Linux box. (and yes, I'm being lazy here)

Xsan is Apple's licensed version of Quantum StorNext (formerly Adic). It's a clustered filesystem with multiple reader/writers simultaneously -- SAN disks, connected via FC to all the hosts (*), with metadata controllers (ie, this box) mediating access and handling locks.

Basically, big filesystem that's mounted on more than one host at a time and bloody fast, especially with big files.

(* the "full" StorNext product, which doesn't play with OS X, can have hosts connected by ethernet to the filesystem, not just via the SAN.)

 

[plutonium]

At this point, OS X is dead to me.

Nobody needs a centralized "chilled air" , highly regimented datacenter to provide a server with 1-2 TB of data anymore.

<munch>

What Apple does will speak louder than any "forward looking statement that isn't binding". A slightly tweaked Mac Pro (delivered when a new Mac Pro is due) that is more easily rackmountable as an option would address a large segment of folks who really only need 2-4 rack mounted servers. Will it conquer the whole datacenters? No. Will they sell a decent number of them? Probably yes if the software really adds value.

If it doesn't have two power supplies and at least a minimal LOM capability, it's dead to me. I'm currently an admin for about 400 Linux, Solaris, Windows, and OS X servers.

If it's not in the datacenter, I can't back it up in a reasonable way to ensure business continuity, or guarantee redundant connectivity if uptime actually matters. It's not just the "chilled air" -- there's other infrastructure, like redundant network, redundant power (an UPS next to your desk won't cut it), and physical security if it holds private data, like anything about students (FERPA) or research data.

We've got a group of xserves running Final Cut Pro server to store and serve out about 50TB of video produced by students and instructors. I can't back that ***** up without a Netbackup media server running StorNext FX to directly grab the data off the SAN, and I sure as hell couldn't do that outside a data center, much less having the machine running the backups in a different DC but connected to the same SAN for DR (disaster recovery). Performance requirements mean NFS isn't a bloody replacement for the SAN, and backing up 50T over 1G ethernet isn't a pleasant task -- especially considering the weak support for OS X on most enterprise backup software.

If Apple doesn't produce a server solution -- a rack kit for a bloody desktop isn't a solution -- or, preferably, just let me run OS X Server on our existing vSphere farms, we stop using OS X. Not just for the video farm -- I think we're about to deploy Podcast Producer with some custom tools to support distance learning, and recording lectures to make available to students enrolled in the classes. I'm fairly sure it's on hold now, because we have no way to properly support that using Minis or Mac Pros that we can't put in a DC.

The alternatives to OS X aren't great either -- a programmer noted that the video manipulation he can do in 300 lines of Cocoa would probably take several thousand lines of C++ on Linux, and building our own podcast producer-type environment isn't something I want to see.

These moves, making OS X less enterprise-friendly, are likely to lead to less use on the desktop as well. OpenDirectory was a nice start at managing Macs, but again -- we can't make a service that we rely on day to day without decent *redundant* hardware that's in a redundant environment (a datacenter).

Allowing virtualization of OS X Server would make a lot of large corporations -- and universities -- very, very happy. I'd be willing to put up with license servers for it (FlexLM or similar, like Microsoft's KMS for Windows Activation). Hell, the license servers can have hardware dongles.

</rant>

 

[backdraft]

If thats the case Apple would have canned the Mac Pro and left the Xserve. Why would they turn the Mac Pro into a rackmount when the Xserve already exists?

Less work to upgrade the CPU's on the Xserve then redesign the Mac Pro.

A slightly tweaked Mac Pro (delivered when a new Mac Pro is due) that is more easily rackmountable as an option would address a large segment of folks who really only need 2-4 rack mounted servers. Will it conquer the whole datacenters? No. Will they sell a decent number of them? Probably yes if the software really adds value.

 

[Longey Nowze]

Apple always made servers!

I don't think Apple is abandoning OS X Server. Apple always had servers! just not rack mountable ones.

They released their first server the Workgroup Server 90 in march 93 and came with A/UX.

Apple had OS 9 server.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workgroup_Server

 

[AidenShaw]

If it doesn't have two power supplies and at least a minimal LOM capability, it's dead to me. .... Hell, the license servers can have hardware dongles.

</rant>

Did you know that intelligent posts can get you banned from Macrumours?



Anyway, thanks for the clear description of some use cases that have been screwed by Apple's server drop.

 

[ortuno2k]

That thing is fugly!

 

[BTW]

Ah, that's too bad. It would have been neat if they had an OSX clone for servers. Oh well.