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SATA Based XServe RAID Prototype Uncovered

081440 said:
Nice, but I mean haven't we seen this one coming from a mile away... SATA is nothing new.

If Apple offers 10,000 rpm drives in there then it would be really impressive along with the price tag....
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Apple sells 15,000 rpm SAS drives in its xServes. I wonder how much of a difference that makes in terms of sustained throughput. I remember SAS gets about Gbps bandwidth, but what is it like in real life? Especially if it was put in a RAID setup.
 
Counterfit said:
The drive connector isn't going to make it any faster, as that's not the slowest part. It's still the drive mechanism itself that's holding everything back.
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Except that the drive connector spec also supports NCQ - that can be a sizeable performance boost when the drive is busy (like the multi-threaded server load that the poster mentioned).
 
14TB not 10.5

It's gonna be 14X1TB ADM not 10.5TB. We will purcahse one with Apple xSAN. Hope that it has the same price of the ATA xServe RAID.
 
guzhogi said:
Apple sells 15,000 rpm SAS drives in its xServes. I wonder how much of a difference that makes in terms of sustained throughput. I remember SAS gets about Gbps bandwidth, but what is it like in real life? Especially if it was put in a RAID setup.
Click to expand...

I don't know about Apple's specs but typically you can buy arbitrary performance with one of these kinds of arrays. You don't even need really fast drives because you can add drives and they run in parallel.

I suspect Apple is using six fiber channels so that they can support a "cluster" of servers. Remember ZFS is coming with Leopard. I imagine this new array will be released for use with Leopard, ZFS and all.

As for performance, the limit can be the interface to the desktop. But if that is a gigabit ethernet it's reasonably fast
 
I don't know about Apple's specs but typically you can buy arbitrary performance with one of these kinds of arrays.
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Exactly. While i support the move (if its real) to SATA/SAS (assuming they can be mix/matched with regular xserves) RAID is not about a heap of expensive disks.

RAID originally stood for redundant array of inexpensive disks

in this type of device, you are likely using either RAID5, RAID10 or RAID50, all of which have redundancy by design. its about using the same cheap (ie: ultra ata instead of scsi) components but getting better results by design.
 
AidenShaw said:
Except that the drive connector spec also supports NCQ - that can be a sizeable performance boost when the drive is busy (like the multi-threaded server load that the poster mentioned).
Click to expand...

I didn't know that was connector dependent. It's about time this became prevalent though, as it seems the PATA implementation of the concept sucks balls. (the ATA bus has to look like an ISA bus to the OS? wonderful. 🙄 )

I wonder if this could be passed through a FW800 connection, as it would make it possible for me to run Azureus and VLC at the same time...
 
Counterfit said:
I didn't know that was connector dependent. It's about time this became prevalent though, as it seems the PATA implementation of the concept sucks balls. (the ATA bus has to look like an ISA bus to the OS? wonderful. 🙄 )

I wonder if this could be passed through a FW800 connection, as it would make it possible for me to run Azureus and VLC at the same time...
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um.. im sorry but what the hell does an enterprise raid array have to do with your video pilfering and watching?
 
Counterfit said:
I wonder if this could be passed through a FW800 connection, as it would make it possible for me to run Azureus and VLC at the same time...
Click to expand...
NCQ (Native Command Queuing) is only really of benefit under heavy load - when the disk is not keeping up with the OS requests for data, and a queue of requests exists.

Unless you're downloading over a terabit link, and watching uncompressed HD 1080p on multiple screens - it's unlikely that NCQ will do anything for you.
 
iomar said:
Wow, looks pretty cool. I am getting this for my network!
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@ home?? 😎
😀

Good news, but nowhere near earth shattering... expected this far sooner, didn't you?
I expect a quiet update on the AppleStore soon.

A hardware RAID card for the Xserve Xeon is more anticipated IMHO.
 
BenRoethig said:
An entry level single socket 3000 series server would be nice.
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Or a quad-core mini-tower... 😎

Did you see the Windows Home Server based system that HP announced at CES?

B1server.jpg


http://h71036.www7.hp.com/hho/cache/447351-0-0-225-121.html

Four internal hot-swap drives, headless (put it in a closet, manage remotely), ...
 
In reading the replies at Appleinsider one poster referred to an expected bandwidth of 6 or 12 gigabytes per second (integrated fibre channel switch inside Apple's upcoming RAID). That seems fast enough to capture the upcoming 4K RED camera raw content, even at the higher 60 and 120 frames per second.

Storage hardware might be catching up to capture hardware. Just barely. I hope there are not two or more cameras on that shoot!

So if RED and other similar camers simply had a utility to act as the computer and save directly to a RAID, no computer would be needed!

Rocketman
 
guzhogi said:
I'll agree, this sounds like a BS thing. I can't believe this got out of Apple's control.

As for the SATA, it's about time! Computers have been using SATA for years now. Something I'd like to see them add is Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). The xServe has it. Either way, the new drive connector is gonna make it a lot faster! I work in an elementary school district and I think a few of the schools use them to store student accounts. It might help speed up speed up log in time.
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Doubtful. You're not pushing a hard drive to do authentication.
 
Someone's gonna be in trouble...

Someone's gonna be in big trouble... if you violate NDAs and confidentiality
agreements, remember to "file off the serial numbers"
 
AidenShaw said:
NCQ (Native Command Queuing) is only really of benefit under heavy load - when the disk is not keeping up with the OS requests for data, and a queue of requests exists.

Unless you're downloading over a terabit link, and watching uncompressed HD 1080p on multiple screens - it's unlikely that NCQ will do anything for you.
Click to expand...

Awww 🙁
 
The drives in the Intel Xserve are mix and match, SATA and SCSI. It has a two-for-one SATA/SAS controller bolted to the Intel I/O controller. Seems fair to assume the RAID will also do both.
Regarding 750GB ADMs, Apple's official line is that they haven't approved (they tend to use the word rated actually) the 750s for use in the current RAID.
I have always thought it makes more sense to buy the smallest possible drive modules from Apple, then swap the disks with your own choice. Apple claims to test their ADMs thoroughly, and this should mean they are more reliable, but they still fail, so I reckon buying a stack of off the shelf Seagate drives is a better bet. That way you get a 5 year warranty, and its still probably cheaper than buying big ADMs from Apple. Plus Apple drives are odd sizes, so you have to get a replacement from them, even when the warranty runs out in order to rebuild your array.

For example, Apple will sell you a 7TB (14x500GB) for $13000.
If you instead buy the 1TB (4x250GB) and 10 extra 250GB ADMs, then get 16 750GB Seagate drives at $300 each, it totals less than $16000. You have 2 spare drives, and 5 year warranties on all 10.5TB.
 
How are they selling?

I used to use alot of XServe RAID hardware - before eSATA became standardized and cheap.

It's still a nice box, granted, but for the price, everybody I work with would rather spend less than half the money and go eSATA. Even a set of multilane enclosures only brings the cost up to half the cost of XServe RAID.

Are these things selling well? Certainly if you're on a switched fibre channel network, they're well priced, but for single host storage they've been obsoleted in at least some markets. And I've only ever seen them hooked up to one XServe or linux box or maybe two, each half operating independently. Does anybody here actually use them in fibre channel installations (our friend from Baltimore, perhaps?)
 
ClimbingTheLog said:
Does anybody here actually use them in fibre channel installations (our friend from Baltimore, perhaps?)
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We have a dozen or so, along with hundreds of real arrays from EMC (Symettrix, Clariion), HP, Fujitsu, IBM, HDS and others.

The Apple RAIDs are basically toys (e.g. no RAID-6, max 7 disks per LUN) compared to enterprise arrays (priced like toys as well, fortunately). The failure rate is pretty high, and the tools fairly primitive (compared to the others).

We don't put data that we depend upon on the Apple RAIDs, they're only for test&dev and other jobs where losing the entire array is only an inconvenience. If you need lots of TB for testing, the Apple RAID is a good deal.
 
IMHO, and it's totally my own opinion and not that of my employer or anyone else, yadda yadda...

Xserve RAID is mostly for the creative market, esp. video capture, and more or less made to work very easily w/ Xsan. I sell a good number of Xserve RAIDs as direct-attached storage for video editing rigs, but a lot of the ones we sell are for Xsan installations. With Xsan, the bandwidth of an individual RAID no longer is much of a limiter (within limits), as you can simply add LUNs from multiple RAIDs together into high-performance storage pools.

The price of these kinds of setups is very modest compared to "real" enterprise solutions. Xsans are also plenty stable, so long as the users don't do anything really dumb like updating the version of Xsan on a client, before the MDCs (Metadata Controllers). BIG NO NO! :-O
 
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