Upgrading from XServe RAID to VTrak E-Class

[BrandonPrimal]

We have an XServe Mac with 18TB of online storage spread across four XServe RAID units. A couple drives have failed and replacements are too hard to find, so I'm upgrading this year.

Thinking about the E-Class units, since I have 4Gbps fibre cards in the XServe and no need for the faster connection offered by the more expensive x30 series.

A few easy questions, since I have no prior experience with Promise...

Might I be cursing myself by upgrading to an older model? I see replacement drive modules on the Apple Store for the x30, but not the E-Class. Is the E-Class on its way out?

Are the bare drives within the modules user-replaceable, or do you have to get whole new modules in case of a drive failure? Where can modules be found, if not at the Apple store?

Looking at the data sheet I see the two controllers side by side. I'm assuming I could set up each half (8 drives) as its own RAID-5 array, which the Mac server will see as two physical drives - is this right?

Thanks for any help,
Brandon

[michele.d]

Brandon,

Sounds as though you have done your homework, a wise choice. The Ex10 family comes with our outstanding 3 year hardware warranty from date of purchase. This product is a proven workhorse so there is no threat of EOL of this product anytime soon.

Drives in drive trays are sold as end user Field Replaceable Unit (FRU) modules, and can be purchased from the Apple Store or an Apple Reseller.

Array/LUNs can be created in any RAID combination, limited only by drive count. And can be set affinitive to either redundant controller.

LUNs may be made available to all, many, or one host. For more information on configurations see the Promise KB article 10093 and/or similar at http://kb.promise.com/ Thank you for your interest…. Promise Support Team

[BrandonPrimal]

Thanks for the info - although now that I've looked at the Pegasus line, I'm reconsidering Fibre Channel altogether. Looks like I can get 36TB of raw storage for $6k with Pegasus versus 32TB for $15k from the Ex10 line, leaving enough in the budget to pick up a Thunderbolt-capable Mac server - as soon as such a thing exists.

More research may be needed. Since I'm not using a SAN, and all our server drives are shared through a Mac host server (not directly plugged into an ethernet switch, for instance), and since Pegasus supports RAID-5 with hot-swap drive bays, there wouldn't seem to be any major disadvantages in moving to the new technology (besides replacing our perfectly fine 1.5-year-old XServe so soon).

Now if I could only give all the client Macs and PCs in the building faster access to the server storage without rewiring the whole office...