Apple on Tuesday announced that its Xserve RAID storage system is now available with up to 5.6 terabytes (TB) of storage capacity — up from 3.5TB in previous models. Apple has also received certification for the Xserve RAID from Cisco and SUSE Linux, and has optimized the RAID system to work with Apple’s own Xsan Storage Area Network (SAN) file system.
The increased 5.6TB capacity is due to Apple’s use of 400GB Ultra ATA drives working over 14 independent channels. Xserve RAID features 512MB cache per controller and offers sustained throughput of more than 380MBps. Apple claims the performance is good enough to support two streams of uncompressed 10-bit High Definition (HD) video editing using RAID Level 5.
The Xserve RAID resides in a 3U-tall standard rack-mountable chassis. Xserve is available in a 1TB configuration for $5,999, 2.8TB for $8,499 or 5.6TB for$12,999. The storage system can connect to a host server, including an Xserve or Power Mac desktop system, using Apple’s US$499 dual-channel 2GB Fibre Channel PCI-X card.