The bundling of the XSAN client with OSX Lion and the bundling of the XSAN Admin with OSX Lion Server basically acknowledges that Apple have now vacated the data centre space. If Apple had an enterprise class server hardware platform, there is no way that Quantum would have agreed to allow Apple to basically give away Stornext.
But it does give Quantum a trojan horse into the cluster file-system space; it will be very cheap for the home enthusiast to build their own scale-out block storage environment but if you really want to build at any scale, you are going to need start buying enterprise servers and then you’ll be into the realms of Stornext licensing costs.
I do find it amusing that Apple are happily bundling in Enterprise-like features such as XSAN, Fibre Channel support into what is at most an SMB Server whereas they continue to ignore technologies like iSCSI which fit nicely into an SMB environment.
And more interestingly, what Operating System is iCloud running on? What hardware? Is it OSX Server running on another manufacturer’s hardware platform? Or is it a completely different operating system?
It’s a bit like the stories that Microsoft for years ran their core accounting on something other than Windows. If you want to be a serious Enterprise player, you must drink your own champagne (which does sound something like Shirley MacLaine would do).
Reading between the lines of posts and looking at the pictures of steves new data centre I’m going to say…… ICloud is fully virtual.
It’s running on hp servers using netapp san storage. Hypervisor is vmware vsphere 5 running lion guest os.
Why do I say this? Based on hcl supported hardware in the pics and apples only server os had a eula change to allow virtual hardware plus leaked vmware notes saying support for mac os server is now supported in esx 5. 0
Now the only way in hell that apple would allow its os to run on non apple hardware aka vmware is if they wanted it to…. But why would they want to? ICloud is the reason.
What do you mean Quantum wouldn’t allow Apple to give it away? Do you have some actual insight into the deal between Apple and Quantum, or are you just guessing? For all you know, Apple has agreed to a flat fee for every copy of Lion Server sold. Quantum may be making money hand over fist on this deal.
Quantum may well make money hand over fist on this bit of the deal but if Apple had a true enterprise hardware platform, I do not believe personally believe that Quantum would have agreed such a dilution of the value of Stornext.
I don’t claim any special knowledge but it just wouldn’t make sense. As a trojan; it makes fantastic sense.
um. quantum pays apple to use stornext.crazy but true.