Hell with Proper setup Apple Xraid

[raidnoob]

Our small non profit revived a like new Xraid storage device, it came with 14x500GB Drives in it and has 1 month of use on it. We would like to use this as 2 drives on our internal gigabit network between both Macs and PCs. I do understand that i will have 1 controller act as 1 drive for 7 drives and the same for the other.

Question is what do i need to make this happen? I have the Xraid and 2 Apple Fiver cables. Was thinking about getting an Xserve with a fiber card and Xsan.

Also, should I get the batteries for the unit, it will be on a UPS but not a big one.

 

[belvdr]

Not sure about the setup of the Xraid, but I can tell you two things:

1. You can connect this device to any OS. It does not have to be an Xserve.
2. You'll want to get batteries in for the array in order to enable write-back cache. The UPS won't enable this and your write performance will suffer.

 

[raidnoob]

Not sure about the setup of the Xraid, but I can tell you two things:

1. You can connect this device to any OS. It does not have to be an Xserve.
2. You'll want to get batteries in for the array in order to enable write-back cache. The UPS won't enable this and your write performance will suffer.

Ok, yeah I am just not sure if I can plug this thing into the fiber ports on the switch lol, and i have had seen a few people talk about needing a file handler since it is block level storage

 

[pbuerk]

I'd recommend setting it up as a NAS, just connecting the XServe RAID to either a MacPro or XServe. Both require the installation of a FibreChannel card, and I'd recommend sticking with the Apple one for simplicity. Unless you have a burning need to implement a SAN, I'd hold off on installing XSAN or Lion Server. You have to balance the resulting complexity against the benefits of implementing XSAN, and for most users it's not worth it.

 

[raidnoob]

I'd recommend setting it up as a NAS, just connecting the XServe RAID to either a MacPro or XServe. Both require the installation of a FibreChannel card, and I'd recommend sticking with the Apple one for simplicity. Unless you have a burning need to implement a SAN, I'd hold off on installing XSAN or Lion Server. You have to balance the resulting complexity against the benefits of implementing XSAN, and for most users it's not worth it.

Do you know where i can find a how to on making it a NAS?

 

[kwikdeth]

if you dont need the latest OSX Server, you can pick up a G5 Xserve and a FC card on ebay for quite cheap. I just picked up a replacement for my dead XSG5 (my dumb mistake) off ebay for $150. FC cards for them are also pretty damn cheap.

 

[raidnoob]

if you dont need the latest OSX Server, you can pick up a G5 Xserve and a FC card on ebay for quite cheap. I just picked up a replacement for my dead XSG5 (my dumb mistake) off ebay for $150. FC cards for them are also pretty damn cheap.

Would I see a difference with a G5 and a intel one?

Do I need to have Xsan to set it up as a NAS or can I just plug it into the server and share the drive?

 

[belvdr]

Would I see a difference with a G5 and a intel one?

Do I need to have Xsan to set it up as a NAS or can I just plug it into the server and share the drive?

You cannot just connect it to a network switch, as you mentioned above. It is a disk drive.

You do not need Xsan for a single node. You can find what you need about setting it up here:

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/xserveraid_userguide.pdf

After you configure the array and format it, just share it out.