ENGINEERING

Apple today announced it has begun shipping Xsan, a high performance, enterprise class Storage Area Network (SAN) file system priced at the industry's most aggressive price point of $999 per client and per server. Xsan combines breakthrough performance with Apple's legendary ease of use for customers who require scalable, high-speed access to centralized shared data for storage consolidation and workflow in high-performance computing environments. "Apple's pro video and IT customers now have an affordable, high performance SAN file system on Mac OS X," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Together, Apple's Xsan file system software and Xserve RAID storage hardware deliver a powerful, easy-to-manage, enterprise class SAN solution at a breakthrough low price." Xsan is a 64-bit cluster file system for Mac OS X that enables organizations to consolidate storage resources and provide multiple computers with concurrent file-level read/write access to shared volumes over Fibre Channel. It is certified with Apple's suite of professional applications, including Final Cut Pro HD, Apple's Emmy award-winning editing software and Motion, a breakthrough application that redefines professional motion graphics production. For the first time on Mac OS X, up to 64 video professionals can simultaneously access a single storage volume that supports multiple high-bandwidth video streams for efficient workflow in video and film editing, broadcast, visual effects and motion graphics creation. "Xsan is the holy grail of shared storage for Final Cut Pro," said Mark Raudonis, director of Post Production, Bunim-Murray Productions. "We can now take advantage of Final Cut Pro HD in a fully networked environment to edit groundbreaking reality TV series such as MTV's 'The Real World' and 'Road Rules' and FOX's 'The Simple Life' in real time at a third of the cost of existing solutions." Xsan is ideal for demanding professional video workflows as well as storage consolidation for business, government, education and high performance computing. Advanced features such as metadata controller failover and Fibre Channel multipathing ensure high availability; file-level locking allows multiple systems to read and write concurrently to the same volume which is ideal for complex workflows; and sophisticated volume management results in more efficient use of storage resources. Setup, administration and monitoring is built into the Xsan administration software which provides volume management, SAN file system configuration and remote monitoring in one integrated, easy-to-use application. User quotas and access controls allow administrators to restrict storage usage and file access for maximum data security. Since Xsan is interoperable with ADIC's StorNext File System, it can be used in heterogeneous environments including Windows, UNIX and Linux operating system platforms. Additionally, Xsan is supported by ADIC's industry leading data management software, StorNext Management Suite. Pricing & Availability Xsan is available immediately through the Apple Store (www.apple.com) and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $999 (US) per client and per server. Apple has qualified Xsan with Xserve G4, Xserve G5, Power Mac G4, Power Mac G5, Xserve RAID and Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X cards. Xsan requires Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server version 10.3 software installed and will support qualified Fibre Channel switches from vendors such as Brocade, QLogic or Emulex.