dc0de wrote:
Now I'm confused, because I was just talking about the XServe RAID, which is $13K for 14 drives and 7TB, and actually I don't need that much.
Well, actually, if you add the features that the EMC comes with, it's more like 17K...
I'd need the a model that runs about $8K.
If you need 3.5TB of ATA, and you think $8K is a good price, then knock yourself out... personnally, I think that spending $8K for 3.5TB of RAID is way too much money for such a small raid set. And if you were spending that much, I would suggest SATA, at least you won't suffer the slowness of ATA solution.
Lastly, if you are purchasing this for the RAID fault tolerant features, you should purchase the battery backed cache, and the extended warranty and support... which Apple seems to like, as it takes the price of the 3.5TB solution up to $12,147.00 when you add the battery backed cache, Service Parts and Apple Care plan for 3 years.
That's an aweful big chunk of change for a company that can't keep their architecture straight... again, I'd purchase the EMC... but, I don't have a hard-on for apple... I like "best of breed" products... not the pretty ones...
We're so far away from actually purchasing anything, that the Apple product is the first one I even looked at. As to slowness, that shouldn't be a problem with Apple's solution because of the single controller per drive, right? Its touted as being quite fast. You clearly know alot more about this than me, and I have alot of research to do ;)