Affordable Storage for Big Data

Advances in compute technology and scientific methods have ignited a data explosion in scientific research. To manage this information, you need scalable, flexible and cost-effective storage and data management solutions, as well as fast access to your data. Apple storage solutions give you all of this — within budget and with the cross-platform flexibility you require.

Building Blocks for a Complete Storage Solution

For environments ranging from small departments to large lab installations, you can build a low-cost, high-capacity storage solution combining high-performance hardware and software from Apple. The Xserve RAID storage unit works seamlessly with the Xserve file server to provide an affordable alternative to traditional NAS devices. Offering the compatibility of open standards and Apple’s legendary manageability, this high-performance, high-capacity solution allows Mac, Windows and Linux clients to share terabytes of information — with no per-user licensing fees.

Apple Storage Solution
Storage device	Xserve RAID, up to 10.5TB
File servers		Backup	BakBone, Attempo, and BRU

High-Performance Storage Networking

A Storage Area Network (SAN) allows you to pool data across multiple RAID devices for better performance while each client can access this centralized data as if connected directly to it. Xsan from Apple is a Storage Area Networking application that let’s multiple computers concurrently access terabytes, even petabytes, of storage on Xserve RAID over high-speed Fibre Channel. The advantages of a SAN solution include:

• Dynamic scalability
• High-volume utilization
• High-fault tolerance
• Faster data access and efficient sharing with high-speed Fibre Channel

Example of SAN Configuration