XServe RAID - No longer available?

[Perbix, Michael]

I have two Xserve Raid units that are fully loaded with with HD's and used extensivley for our imaging and file servers.  They have been work horses with 0 (Zero, nichts, nothing, zilch) trouble.  One is running on 5 years old (purchased in 2003) and other than 2 HD's that went south...no problems at all.  These raids have been perfect for my need.  Now we also have a monster honkin' EMC SAN with Fiber Channel that serves as storage for all our Windows servers.  Has all the enterprise features etc etc etc.....

But, I would say that I bought these Raids for a specific function, and I have gotten way more out of them than I originally planned.

    -Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: macosx-admin-bounces at omnigroup.com [mailto:macosx-admin-bounces at omnigroup.com] On Behalf Of Brett Dikeman
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 3:38 PM
To: Suraj Rai
Cc: Omni List
Subject: Re: XServe RAID - No longer available?

On Feb 19, 2008 9:04 AM, Suraj Rai <surajrai at mac.com> wrote:
> Looks like the XServe RAID product has been decommissioned by Apple

Whoa.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/01/19/sata_based_xserve_raid_prototype_escapes_from_apple_photos.html

Either Apple did an about-face, or someone killed a lot of time in Photoshop on the above!


> following the announcement for XSan2.  Looks like they are
> recommending "Promise RAID" solution.

Ugh.  They're about 1-2 steps from the bottom of the barrel in the RAID controller market; I have no experience with their disk array units, but given how bad support and drivers were for the controllers, this isn't encouraging.  There had to have been someone better to go with...

Then again, given how bad the Xraid was, it's hard to fall off the floor...

> How long before XServe itself is also taken out?

I'd say "never"- it fills a market segment nothing else can.  It may be substantially changed, but there will always be something for a server/cluster node.  Also, Jobs has consistently maintained that licensing was a gigantic mistake.  It was (both in terms of competition they couldn't handle, and a bad experience for users on clone hardware hurting their brand image.)

Brett
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