Datasheet

Technology Overview

Xsan

Compatibility and Interoperability

Xsan lets you create a SAN that is compatible with your existing infrastructure—giving

you the flexibility to build a system that’s right for your organization, while maximizing

the return on your storage investment.

Support for native Mac OS X applications

Xsan is designed to support most native Mac OS X and UNIX applications and delivers

incredible performance on Power Mac and Xserve systems. For maximum flexibility and

compatibility with non-Apple systems, it uses a case-sensitive, single-fork file system.

Fibre Channel infrastructure integration

Apple has qualified several of the most popular Fibre Channel switches for use

with Xsan, Xserve RAID, and the Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X Card. These include the

QLogic SANbox2-8, SANbox2-16, SANbox2-64, and SANbox 5200; the Cisco MDS 9000

family; the Emulex SAN Storage Switch 355, Emulex SAN Storage Switch 375, and

Emulex 9200; and the Brocade SilkWorm 3200, SilkWorm 3800, SilkWorm 3900, and

SilkWorm 12000 series.

ADIC integration

In heterogeneous computing environments, you can add non–Mac OS X clients to

your Xsan network using ADIC’s StorNext File System. Computers running StorNext File

System on Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Linux, IRIX, Solaris,

and AIX can access Xsan volumes directly over high-speed Fibre Channel—without

any modification. In addition, Mac and Xserve clients with Xsan can be added to an

existing ADIC-based SAN environment.

ADIC has also announced that its StorNext Management Suite will support Xsan. This

policy-based information lifecycle management (ILM) solution can be used in conjunc

tion with ADIC’s Scalar line of tape libraries, offering a robust tape backup option for

your Xsan volumes.

Fibre Channel switch

File system client File system client File system client

Xsan volume

Metadata controller

Mixed-Platform SAN

Sharing data over Ethernet

With an Xserve on your Xsan network, you

can easily share storage using a network

file system protocol, such as AFP, SMB/CIFS,

or NFS—all built into Mac OS X Server and

included at no additional cost with every

Xserve system.