Apple has released the Xsan Tuner application for testing and tuning Xsan installations.

About the Xsan Tuner Application

The Xsan Tuner application is used to test the data and video transfer capabilities of your storage area network and it’s Xsan volumes. Xsan Tuner can simulate both standard UNIX reads and writes as well as Final Cut Pro video reads and writes for a variety of common video formats.

Use Xsan Tuner to see if your SAN can handle planned workloads before you put it into production use. An Xsan Tuning Guide is provided along with the application to help understand the Xsan Tuner results as well as provide configuration suggestions to optimize your SAN performance.

To use the Xsan Tuner application, you need the following:

• Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server v10.4.2 or later
• Xsan 1.1 or later

I'm not the only guy on the Xsanity crew who watched every stage of this year's Tour de France. So I love, love, love this success story just posted at Apple: covering the Tour demands top-speed performance with zero margin for error, so the United Kingdom's VTV production company and Soho-based Molinare broadcast facility dumped an old Avid workflow in favor of Xsan, Final Cut Pro and PictureReady. Sounds like the 20TB Xsan rose to the challenge like a champ.

We're happy to announce an update to our home-grown Xsan defragmentation app, Xsanity Defrag.

Xsanity Defrag 1.1 has been updated for Xsan 1.1. The app is a GUI wrapped around the snfsdefrag command-line utility that ships with Xsan, allowing you to defragment files on Xsan volumes or storage pools with ease. It indicates the level of fragmentation on your Xsan volumes or storage pools, and allows you to monitor the progress of the defragmentation process.

We'll be providing support for the app in a dedicated forum on this site. All feedback is welcomed!

Xsan 1.1 Update for 10.4

Xsan 1.1 Update for 10.3.9

Xsan Admin 1.1 Update (10.3.9 or 10.4.1)

The much-anticipated Xsan 1.1 updates are finally available for download. While each of the three above are obtainable via Software Update, you might prefer to check out these standalone installers. The release brings Tiger compatibility, new documentations, and a number of performance improvements, but no few new features. The updates are free, and your existing Xsan serial numbers will of course continue to work. Don't forget to return to our forums to discuss your update experiences.

From the release notes:

Important Notes: If any system in your SAN is running Xsan 1.1 on Mac OS X v10.4, then your metadata controllers must also run the same. You can't use a metadata controller running on Mac OS X v10.3 if any client is running Xsan 1.1 on Mac OS X v10.4.

We read this to mean the following: If all your systems are running OS 10.3, a mix of Xsan 1.0.1 and 1.1 is O.K. But if any client has OS 10.4 and Xsan 1.1, then you must upgrade your metadata controllers to OS 10.4 and Xsan 1.1.