Xsan 2.3 was released this morning -- as a component of Lion. To commemorate this event, Apple published several KB articles. Check them out below:

• Xsan volume may not mount, fsmpm may not run after migrating from Mac OS X v10.6 to OS X Lion
• Xsan: Manually configuring Xsan after promoting OS X Lion to Lion Server
• Xsan, Lion Server: Use case sensitive volumes for StorNext and pre-Lion clients
• Xsan 2.3: Deactivating a storage pool

As always, we encourage patience and research before upgrading your Xsan!

Apple released Thunderbolt Mac mini Servers today, with Lion Server preinstalled (which now includes Xsan). Standard kit is a quad core 2.0 GHz Core i7 CPU with dual 7,200 RPM 500 GB HDDs and 4 GB of RAM. BTO options include dual 256 GB SSDs with TRIM support, and up to 8 GB RAM.

Unsurprisingly, the Gigabit Ethernet on board no longer claims jumbo frame support (no Core iX Mac thus far as supported jumbo frames on its built-in Gig-E NIC).

85 Watts. That's it. Near silent operation, trivial heat output. Now we just need Promise to ship SANlink.

Bone stock list price is $999, fully loaded hardware (8 GB RAM and dual SSD options added) lists for $2,199.

Tonight Quantum Corp. announced their first appliance, the M330 metadata controller appliance. It includes is a pair of Xeon servers with StorNext pre-installed plus shared storage for metadata.

Also included:

• 10 StorNext client licenses of your choice: Linux, Unix or Windows
• Xsan client compatibility (Mac clients don't count against the 10 StorNext licenses)
• 2 additional licenses plus HA for the metadata controllers
• Web management
• New setup, performance tuning, and logging enhancements
• Upgradability to advanced features such as Storage Manager HSM, deduplication, and LAN sharing

The M330 is priced at $75,000 and Quantum says it is available now from resellers. (Disclaimer: my employer is a StorNext reseller and would love to sell this to you.)

Thanks to Matt Geller for bringing this announcement to our attention.

Comments should be posted in our forum, please.

Intro videos and the press release are after the break...

Server for everyone! Apple has announced pricing for Lion Server: $49.99 from the App Store. This is on top of the $29.99 for Lion.

And did you catch this nugget? "Lion also supports industry-standard multipathing and failover, so Xsan can be used with a variety of Fibre Channel RAID storage arrays." I guess Promise has been unblessed.

There it is, in the public announcement at WWDC: "Xsan built in." Sure, it was small type on a list of many features, but it was there.

I'll post more info if available (outside of NDA of course).

What do you think of that 97% price drop?

Update: From the updated What's new in Lion page:

Built into Lion
The Xsan file system is built into OS X Lion, allowing any Mac with appropriate connectivity to access an Xsan volume.

Case insensitivity option
For improved performance and simplicity, you can now create case-insensitive Xsan volumes. These volumes act like traditional HFS+ volumes and do not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase characters in filenames.

New preference pane
A new Xsan pane in System Preferences makes it easier to manage, mount, and unmount Xsan volumes.

Industry-standard multipathing
Lion supports the Asymmetric Logical Unit Access (ALUA) standard for multipathing and failover. This allows Xsan to be used with a variety of Fibre Channel RAID storage arrays.

We don't usually have this sort of blatant promotion on Xsanity, but Tekserve is my employer, and from time to time I've got to feed the meter. Also, you may have noticed how Xserves are getting increasingly difficult to find. And not insignificantly, Tekserve and Xserve rhyme quite well.

Lucky for you, Tekserve has at this very moment a generous stock of Quad-core and Octo-core Xserves. I took this photo this morning, and it doesn't show them all. These are new and with full Apple warranty. Browse our selection on the web or call (212) 929-3645. We will ship anywhere in the USA.

NAB 2011 is now over and here's my short review. The National Association of Broadcasters puts on a big show with a thousands of vendors. Held at the Las Vegas convention centre it is a lot of really big buildings with an insane amount of booths and an ton of people everywhere. It's a conference geared towards broadcasters and the people that support them. NAB 2011 had a lot of things that are of particular interest for Xsan system administrators, integrators, and consultants.

I only spent one day at the NAB show, and I'll be honest, I did not see close to everything! Here's a short of list of highlights, but feel free to add comments with anything else you saw that seemed interesting.

Read on for more about ActiveSAN, Promise, Thunderbolt, Peripherals, Apple FCP X, and Backup Software....

At NAB yesterday, Promise Technology announced the SANLink Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel adapter. From the press release:

"SANLink will provide a dual 4G Fibre Channel link that can be used to connect to external Fibre Channel storage or to an Xsan network. Each adapter features full duplex FC ports that automatically detect connection speed and can operate independently at 1, 2 or 4Gb/s. SANLink is the perfect companion to connect to the new VTrak x30 Series as well as maintain compatibility with the previous generation VTrak x10 Series."

Bringing Xsan to laptops is great, but what about having Mac Mini Servers to interface to Xsan Volumes?

In advance of NAB, Active Storage today announced ActiveSAN configurations and pricing.

I'll post more details here soon, once I get my kid off to school!

Update: Active has confirmed that the listed prices are for a PAIR of units. That's a much easier pill to swallow!