Please Lay Out Case for Buying XServe/XServe RAID

[ezkcdude]

Next year, I will be starting up my own research lab. One of the purchasing decisions I need to make is what server/storage solution to use. In my lab currently, we have an XServe + XServe RAID, and it has mostly served us well (no pun intended, really). My storage needs are roughly 10 TB. So, in the absence of any advice to the contrary, I will likely setup my lab with the same system. I'm just wondering if anyone here has experience with competing solutions (maybe from Sun or DIY RAID systems), and how the XServe performs relative to those, in terms of speed, cost effectiveness, and reliability. All three are important to me. Thanks, for any advice!

[JKitterman]

You need to describe how you are using the current setup. Is it serving up large files with few transactions, is it lots of smaller transactions, what is the end use? What applications are you using? Does it need to be able to grow?

[ezkcdude]

You need to describe how you are using the current setup. Is it serving up large files with few transactions, is it lots of smaller transactions, what is the end use? What applications are you using? Does it need to be able to grow?

The system is used for storing and serving images from time-lapse microscopy experiments. Each experiments generates around 30GB of images, each of which are about 635K. So, to process the images, we need to work with those types of files.

[JKitterman]

I was hoping someone with a little more experience would reply to you. I would guess that if you are currently happy with your setup, I would just stay with Apple products. Do you have any synthetic benchmarks or real use data you can base your decision off of? Sorry I can be much more help than that.

[ezkcdude]

I was hoping someone with a little more experience would reply to you. I would guess that if you are currently happy with your setup, I would just stay with Apple products. Do you have any synthetic benchmarks or real use data you can base your decision off of? Sorry I can be much more help than that.

Yeah, I thought AN would be the place to ask about this. Maybe a more specific "SysAdmin" or "Server" forum is needed. Anyway, I probably will stay with Apple. It's dependable and powerful. It may not be the cheapest solution out there, but it will probably keep me the happiest in the long run.