Nexsan looks to tame storage beast for Apple Xserve

New SATABeast Xi array, with 42TB in a 4U rack, set for unveiling tomorrow

Nexsan Technologies has set tomorrow for the unveiling of its SATABeast XI storage array, which it said will give provide added storage capacity to IT shops running Apple's Xserve.

SATABeast XI will allow up to 42TB drives in a 4U rack enclosure, the company said. The device will ship in mid-March through Nexsan resellers and will cost about US$1,200 per terabyte, said Bob Woolery, senior vice-president of Nexsan.

Woolery said the new array is designed to provide long-term data retention for digital content created by Xserve 1U rackmount servers. SATABeast XI is also optimized for Apple's MacPro workstation environments, he noted. The storage array can be utilized for high-end primary and secondary storage applications, as well as disk-to-disk backup, he said.

In an unrelated move, Apple today introduced a new high-speed Xserve server and Mac Pro desktop products. The new Apple offerings feature roughly up to 3TB and 4TB of internal storage, respectively. Both products are currently shipping.

Woolery noted that Apple is not endorsing SATABeast XI but has been briefed about the storage array. He said the 42TB device can augment existing Xserve storage capabilities for large data sets such as high-definition video and multi-streaming content.

"It makes sense for [Xserve users] to consider archiving because they do a lot of things in content creation which are very large files that take up a lot of storage - that usually needs to be maintained for a long time," said Woolery.

The multi-port SATABeast XI features a Leopard server OS-like GUI, delivers 4GB fiber channel connectivity and supports iSCSI. The storage array is able to conserve power consumption by placing disk drives in an idle state when not in use, remarked Woolery.

He noted that the array can also be used with Apple's Mac Pro systems, though SATABeast XI is not optimized for that hardware.

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