Nexsan gives 42TB array a make-over for picky Apple fans
SATABeast goes Big Mac!
Our Take: Looks like our favorite SAN solution
provider has gone Apple Mac on us. Which is a good thing, after all they
are based in LA! The entertainment industry, a huge industry sector in Southern
California is heavily driven by the Mac world and it makes perfect sense for the
roll out. Taking the award winning SATABeast and modifying it was the best
option by far.
Storage system developer
Nexsan Technologies is releasing a new version
of its SATABeast disk array designed for Apple XServe and Mac Pro systems.
The
SATABeast Xi holds up to 42TB of storage in a
4U form-factor. The hardware is similar to Nexsan's current SATABeast array, but
with tweaks to the box design, web management GUI and software wizards. The
changes address Apple product aesthetics as well as networking peculiarities.
The array has 4gb/s Fibre Channel interface
ports and support for iSCSI. It also sports AutoMAID for slowing the spin of
idle hard drives and a dual-redundant controller for data protection.
Nexsan envisions most XServe or Mac Pro
customers that need this kind of massive storage coming from the film, video and
music industry — a group that tends to fancy Mac-based applications.
So they've also cranked the bevel knob to 11 in
order to make the web-based management GUI look more like something Steve Jobs
would have coughed up.
Bear in mind there's no formal endorsement for
the
Xi from Apple. Those only willing to partake in
devices sanctified by The Big Fruit must be satisfied with the 10.5TB offered by
Apple's Xserve RAID array.
But if you need the extra space, you could
always cram this puppy into the brand new XServe and Mac Pro models Apple
unveiled just yesterday. It can also used as storage in other operating systems
as well.
The price of the array will be about $1,200 per
TB, about the same as the regular
SATABeast price tag. The unit is being
galavanted at the MacWorld Conference in San Francisco next week, with shipments
expected to begin March 15.