Does eSata render my Xserve RAID sellable?

[Doug Beal]

We use a Sonnet Fusion D800 that comes with an Atto R-380 card. this is an SAS system using 8 drives striped raid5. if 1 drive fails you can keep working if 2 drives fail you’re out of luck. We can easily cut 10 bit uncompressed HDCam in 1080i or Psf. I have not had a problem even when running with less than 500 gig available out of 4TB.

Doug Beal
Editor / Engineer
Rock Creative Images
Nashville TN

[Bob Zelin]

Tom –
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/574891-REG/CalDigit_756601_1TB_HDElement_External_Hard.html

you see this Tom. $1419, and it does 350Mb/sec – faster than your $12,000 Apple XServe RAID. Yes, it costs more money for a larger drive arary. The HD Element, Maxx EVO2 4 bay, and other 4 bay MODERN ESATA products can do uncompressed HD all day long.

Are you happy now. No deep breath for me. We are drowning in new technology, and dying from spending all that money on old technology that is now useless. Do you feel desperate, and out of breath – well, you should – because if you don’t SWIM, you will drown. This is 2009. You can use your XServe RAID as a boat anchor.

Bob Zelin

[Michael Alberts]

[Bob Zelin] “You can use your XServe RAID as a boat anchor. “

I’ve just got to step in here. I can’t stand by and see the lowly Xserve RAID box bashed within an inch of it’s life and not give it some support. Yes, by todays standards the Xserve RAID is old school technology, and Apple did nothing to improve or update the design of the box over it’s entire lifetime. It still uses IDE drives! That said, our Xserve RAID works admirable in our Fibre connected workflow. We’ve got a central machine room that houses all our equipment. From there the Xserve is connected to the various rooms, some of which are 20, 40 and 60 feet away.
Let’s also put the Xserve RAID into historical context. When it came out it was the one of the “best bang for your Gigbye buck” out there. It was Fibre. Supported Xsan and other variants of shared storage. Cheap eSata was still a ways off. How were you going to share two FCP stations 30′ apart from one another on a cheap eSata box?
Now that were in 2009, the Xserve RAID has been discarded by Apple, but is still a workhorse for many, many adopters. You can upgrade your internal drives to 750GB and possibly 1TB drives (not too sure about that). Our box will easily pull 200MB/sec sustained. This allows many users to work at ProRes HQ, multi-stream quickly and efficiently. It may be obsolete, but by no means a boat anchor!

We recently purchased a new building for our company. We get to build the infrastructure from the ground up. We’ve purchased more modern boxes for our drive systems, but continue to use our trusty Xserve RAID as well. I plan on squeezing every value added dollar out of that $12,000 purchase!

Hey Bob, how often do you come to LA? We’d love to hire your services for the rebuild. Or do you have anyone you trust in the LA area with your same skill-set?

Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc.
http://www.ambidextrous.net