Apple today announced Final Cut Server 1.5 and Final Cut Studio 7.

Both are available now. Final Cut Studio is a $299 upgrade.

Final Cut Server had been offered in a $999 10-user flavor and a $1,999 unlimited user flavor. Now there is only a $999 unlimited user flavor. Upgrades from either are $299. [Update: The upgrade magically transforms the 10-user license to unlimited. Lucky you!]

New in FC Server:

• Active Directory Support (finally!)
• Edit Proxies in ProRes 422
• Global saved searches, and quicker searching
• Support for image sequences
• More...

New in FC Studio:

• Spotlight support for searching for missing media (works with Xsan)
• Blue-ray export
• Easier exporting, and in the background
• Looks much prettier to me
• More...

What else are you discovering? Comment below.

Apple has posted a new shell script in the Knowledge Base to automatically reboot your old Metadata Controller in the event of an MDC failover. It uses Lights Out Management (known to the rest of the world as IPMI) to reboot even if you have total software failure. It seems like a carefully written script.

It also seems like a script that could turn small problems into seriously large problems. Please engage brain before using.

Today, we are opening the doors on a new forum dedicated to the XRAID line of Mac-focused enterprise storage products. What's more, it will be maintained by Active Technologies's own senior technician (and Xsanity veteran) Jordan Woods. Welcome back Jordan!

For more information about the XRAID, Matt's in-depth review from April is a required reading.

And we remain honored to host the Promise Vtrak forums as well. Now play nice, boys!

Some of us haven't just given birth to storage networks, we're dads to wetware too. In some parts of the world, today is our day. Congratulations especially to those first-time dads out there! (ahem, Bill, ahem)

Speaking of which, why does Versiontracker link to something called "Xsan 2.2"?

Although I'm not there, the word from WWDC is that ZFS is not going to be in Snow Leopard at all.

Infrageeks has some detail.

This is disappointing.

Apple has posted a new knowledge base article on configuring the Promise VTrak for optimal performance. The article demonstrates various configs with lots of nice pictures.

In addition Apple has posted another knowledge base article detailing how to create "Second SAS-connected Expansion Chassis Only" configuration scripts.

Apple has posted an informative guide to troubleshooting permission errors on Xsan.