Apple storage busts out in the enterprise

Storage in the Enterprise This newsletter is sponsored by Silver Peak WAN Acceleration: What You Must Know Join Robert Whiteley, senior analyst, Forrester Research, as he quickly and easily explains the technologies behind WAN acceleration: how each works and how they differ from solution to solution. Get the knowledge you need to understand how the technology can greatly improve your network. Network World's Storage in the Enterprise Newsletter, 06/07/07 Apple storage busts out in the enterprise By Deni Connor Apple’s Xserve RAID and Xsan are ready for enterprise deployment, users said in a crowd-sourcing event last week. At least those users – advertising agencies, photo post-processing and digital media – say that Apple’s Xserve RAID and its storage-area networking Xsan array have filled in well for storage in their businesses. Here’s one of the user’s responses. Network World Storage Buyer's Guide If you're in the market for anything from a tape library to an on-line backup service to a complete, drop-it-in-place SAN Solution, check out this Buyer's Guide with close to 200 products divided among specific, storage market segments. Click Here “Our company has successfully deployed an Xsan installation as the core storage platform for our mortgage-centric document imaging system,” says Steve Rosenhamer, manager of software development for ADFITECH in Edmond, Okla. “Our Xsan currently consists of three Xserve servers and two Xserve RAID storage units, all connected via fiber through an Emulex Fibre Channel switch,” says Rosenhamer. We also have a second mirror installation at a remote site for disaster recovery purposes, which is kept in sync with our production system on a near real-time basis.” “Web-based document retrieval applications are used on a daily basis for real-time access to the documents our clients use to process their mortgage loans as well as to support our in-house operations performing quality control audits on mortgage loans from over 300 clients around the nation,” says Rosenhamer. “Currently, we have about half of a terabyte of data stored, totaling around 20 million individual images. We've had our applications in production for about two years now and the Apple hardware and software has performed flawlessly. We've only lost one hard drive and that was in the very beginning so we just chalked that up to infant mortality of new hardware.” “We chose the Apple platform for a couple of reasons. Obviously price was big consideration. At the time we purchased everything, we spent around $50,000 for all the hardware and software and that set us up with 4TB of scalable storage in a SAN environment with redundant metadata controllers. Price out that amount of storage in a scalable SAN platform from any of the most popular vendors and there's no contest on price, at least there wasn't two years ago. Secondly, we've always been a do it our own way type of shop. We're a mixed Linux and Mac shop, only using Microsoft products when absolutely necessary. Up to this point we'd only had experience with the Mac desktop products but felt very confident in Apple's ability to produce solid, reliable, high-performance equipment and software so we were actually kind of excited to get our hands on their server hardware. If I had to make the decision over again, knowing what I know now, I'd make the same decision, it's been great.” “We're about to add another Xserve RAID to the mix to more than double our storage capacity in light of some upcoming projects that will require us to significantly increase the number of documents we have stored past what our original projections were. According to Apple, this should be a simple process, I expect it to go well -- we'll find out shortly.” You can read the rest here.   What do you think? Post a comment on this newsletter

TODAY'S MOST-READ STORIES: 1. 5 new ways to authenticate users 2. FAQ: What Avaya going private is all about 3. What Google bought in the past 12 months 4. Churn in the VoIP market? 5. Will Cisco suffer IBM's fate? 6. Firefox flaws raise Mozilla security doubts 7. Adult filmmakers taking their lumps on ‘Net? 8. Avaya goes private in $8.2B deal 9. Slideshow: 5 new ways to authenticate users 10. Stealthy attack serves malicious code only once MOST-READ REVIEW: How low can your data go with virtual tape libraries?

Contact the author: Deni Connor is senior editor for Network World magazine covering storage, archiving and compliance, IT in healthcare, Novell and data center-related issues. E-mail Deni.   This newsletter is sponsored by Silver Peak WAN Acceleration: What You Must Know Join Robert Whiteley, senior analyst, Forrester Research, as he quickly and easily explains the technologies behind WAN acceleration: how each works and how they differ from solution to solution. Get the knowledge you need to understand how the technology can greatly improve your network. ARCHIVE Archive of the Storage in the Enterprise Newsletter. BONUS FEATURE IT PRODUCT RESEARCH AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Get detailed information on thousands of products, conduct side-by-side comparisons and read product test and review results with Network World’s IT Buyer’s Guides. Find the best solution faster than ever with over 100 distinct categories across the security, storage, management, wireless, infrastructure and convergence markets. Click here for details. PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered to your inbox each day. Extend your knowledge with a print subscription to the Network World newsweekly, Apply here today. International subscribers, click here. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here. This message was sent to: networking.world@gmail.com. Please use this address when modifying your subscription. Advertising information: Write to Associate Publisher Online Susan Cardoza Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772 Copyright Network World, Inc., 2007