Apple on Tuesday updated its Xserve RAID enterprise storage product, giving it a capacity of up to 10.5TB. According to Apple, the new system lowers the cost per gigabyte of storage to $1.31.
“The customers that are using RAID are putting the product in their infrastructure for broadcast, design, video and education,” Doug Brooks, product manager, Apple’s server & storage hardware group, told Macworld. “We have lots of customers that are very heavy storage users.”
The low cost per gigabyte is helping Apple sell systems to existing Xserve customers and owners of other systems, as well, said Brooks. The Xserve RAID fits into Mac, Windows, Linux, Solaris, NetWare and mixed-platform environments.
Brooks said that competing products are three to five times higher in cost per gigabyte than that Xserve RAID.
Xserve RAID boasts an average read throughput of up to 380MB/s and write throughput of up to 301MB/s. The system also supports real-time, uncompressed, high-definition (HD) and multiple-stream (SD) video editing without dropping a frame, according to Apple.
Apple will be selling the higher capacity drives separately, allowing customers of the older 7TB Xserve RAID to update, if they want. The company will continue to sell the 7TB product and have lowered the price to $12,399.
The 10.5TB Xserve is available from Apple immediately as a build-to-order option.