This morning, Data Robotics doubled the size of their Drobo storage line with two new products equipped with the proprietary BeyondRAID technology -- the Drobo S and the Drobo Elite.

The Drobo S (at right) is a performance storage device designed to answer the question "Why isn't there a Drobo with an eSATA interface?" Not only does the Drobo S have the eSATA interface that many have requested, but the device is now equipped with an even faster ARM processor for enhanced FireWire 800 connectivity.

Like the DroboPro, the Drobo S can offer protection from two simultaneous drive failures. To do this and still offer a large amount of protected storage capacity, the Drobo S has five drive bays instead of the four on the original device, while still maintaining a small desktop footprint. The dual-drive redundancy option can be switched on or off at any time.

As with the DroboPro, the new member of the Drobo family has self-healing technology built-in. The device constantly examines the blocks and sectors of all drives, and flags questionable areas. By scrubbing the drives, data is only written to "healthy" areas on drives in the array.

Mark Fuccio of Data Robotics told TUAW that the eSATA interface provides data transfer up to 50% faster than what was available with FireWire 800, or about 90 MB per second.

Earlier in 2009, the DroboPro brought even more expandability to the Drobo line with eight available drive bays and an iSCSI (Gigabit Ethernet) interface. While the DroboPro had immediate success in locations with a single server, it couldn't multi-host -- in other words, it couldn't be used by multiple servers simultaneously.

Just days after all the hardware updates on Tuesday, Apple has posted two new support downloads.

The first, Pro Applications Update 2009-01, contains several updates for applications in Final Cut Studio. This update includes Final Cut Pro 7.0.1, Motion 4.0.1, Soundtrack Pro 3.0.1, Color 1.5.1, and Compressor 3.5.1.

This update addresses general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues.

You can download this update through Software Update, or on the Apple Support Downloads page.

Also, Apple released Apple Server Diagnostics 3X106, which replaces Apple Server Diagnostics 3X104 to provide support for Snow Leopard Server. This is compatiable with the Xserve (Early 2008 or Early 2009) or the Mac mini server config (Early 2009).

This download is also available on the Apple Support Downloads page.

OK, so it's really just the Snow Leopard Server Multi-City Seminar and not a huge rock band on a world tour, but if you're more interested in servers than following your favorite group, this announcement should get you excited.

Apple's setting up a series of 7 seminars across the country (blissfully ignoring most of the center of the USA except for Chicago) designed to sell IT managers, administrators, server architects, technology coordinators, and anyone else who will listen on the advantages of Snow Leopard Server. The agenda for each seminar includes a hardware and software overview, a discussion of setup, administration, and integration, and information about collaboration and communication with Snow Leopard Server.

For those in the content production world, there will be info about Podcast Producer 2. System Administrators will learn about how scripting can be used to ease their workload, and detailed information about integrating iPhones into the workplace will be presented.

The scheduled stops are:

• Boston, MA / October 27
• New York, NY / October 29
• Seattle, WA / November 17
• Chicago, IL / December 1
• Washington, DC / December 3
• Cupertino, CA / December 8
• Los Angeles, CA / December 10

To reserve a seat for one of the seminar sessions, visit this page on the Apple website.

One of the largest personal iTunes libraries I've ever seen belongs to a client of mine. This client, who was a DJ in the 50's and 60's, has a huge collection of vinyl albums and singles that he painstakingly digitized, cleaned up, and catalogued in iTunes. Needless to say, opening iTunes on his Mac Pro is an exercise in patience.

Thinking about his music storage needs, and the huge amount of digital photos and video that my wife are accumulating, got me musing about other ways to do mass storage inexpensively. At this point, I'm probably OK with a DroboPro, but what if I needed petabytes (1 petabyte = 1,024 terabytes = 1,048,576 gigabytes) of storage? Most solutions at this point in time are quite expensive.

As of 6 AM PDT this morning, off-site backup vendor BackBlaze has put their solution to mass storage needs, the BackBlaze Storage Pod, out to the world as an open source project. Their solution is a relatively inexpensive box (US$7,867 for 67 TB of storage) made up of off-the-shelf components that can be reproduced and/or improved upon by others who also need huge amounts of cheap storage. See those red boxes in the picture to the right? Each one of those contains 67 TB of RAID 6 storage in a 4U box. For a petabyte of storage, you're going to need to spend about $117,000 on about fifteen of the boxes.

In this morning's rush to figure out what had changed at the Apple Store, one of our readers pointed out that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Server (US$499 for an unlimited license) was priced lower than Leopard Server (US$999 for unlimited users). While this is nothing new -- we've known about the price change since June -- it bears repeating.

For businesses with small, single offices to large enterprises with racks full of Xserves, Snow Leopard Server makes a lot of sense. That $499 license provides a lot -- a mail server (not Exchange-compatible, however), CalDAV server for group calendars, group-wide Time Machine backups to a server, a podcast producer, a wiki server, an iChat server, and the new Mobile Access Server, in addition to a plethora of other administrative and client management options.

Along with the Xserve, which I've found to be comparably priced to other enterprise-class servers, and the Mac mini, which makes a great little inexpensive headless server for small offices, Apple has created a set of powerful business tools. Considering that it's now half the price of Leopard Server, Snow Leopard Server is something that more system admins may want to look at, especially in Microsoft-dominated shops.

When a Leopard user wants a backup of the data on her computer, she might just attach an external hard disk to her machine and let Time Machine perform its magic. But how do you do backups for Xserves or large groups of Mac users? In many cases, you use tape libraries attached to servers, client software on the Macs that directs backup data to the server, and an application on the server to sort it all out.

Many Mac, Windows, and Linux system administrators rely on an application from TOLIS Group, Inc. called BRU Server. Last week, TOLIS Group announced BRU Server 2.0, an upgrade to their flagship backup product. The new version has a redesigned GUI that is common to all three OS platforms, and a faster encryption algorithm. One new feature is that client machines running the BRU Server Agent can now initiate their own backups and file restores via drag-and-drop. There's also full support of Access Control Lists (ACLs) and extended attributes on Mac OS X and Linux clients.

TOLIS Group is also offering complete backup bundles consisting of the BRU Server software and tape drives or libraries (up to 96 slots) that have been fully tested for compatibility with Mac OS X and Linux. BRU Server 2.0 starts at $599 for two clients, and workgroup and enterprise licenses available.

We seem to be mentioning both Parallels and Kerio pretty frequently, and they keep coming up with cool stuff. Kerio announced today that it will be offering its mail and collaboration platform, Kerio Mailserver, as a Virtual Appliance for Parallels on the Mac, news that will be of interest to a lot of folks looking for an even easier way to get away from Exchange.

The Virtual Appliance comes with a preconfigured version of CentOS 5.3 Linux, optimized for Kerio Mailserver. It looks like an ideal solution for businesses that need to run more than one OS, allowing hardware to be shared and making efficient use of server power.

I'm guessing you'd want an XServe or high-end Mac Pro if you're planning to deploy multiple Virtual Appliances, but I would think that the KMS Virtual Appliance should run on any Intel Mac which can do a decent job of running Parallels to begin with. If you missed it, check out the WWDC video of a tricked-out Mac Pro running Leopard and two installs of Vista with Parallels.

The Kerio Mailserver Virtual Appliance comes ready-to-run (if you have Parallels Desktop or Server) as a 30-day trial. Pricing starts at $499US for ten users, with an option to add integrated McAfee Anti-Virus for an extra $100US ($599).

As Mike mentioned in the news roundup yesterday, word is going around that the corporate overlords at Apple are planning to build a massive server farm in the state of North Carolina within the next decade or so. How do we know? Because the company is working on getting a few nice tax breaks to go along with the deal, eventually worth about $46 million if Apple fulfills their end of the agreement. Their end of the agreement being a huge investment of a whopping $1 billion (that's over 333,000 Xserves, if that is indeed what they're installing -- and we bet not) into an economy that could probably use it. What exactly will go in there? We aren't sure -- lawmakers say the investment is worth it, and obviously Apple isn't showing their cards.

[Note: the $1B investment figure is not an upfront number, but rather a total investment over the first 9 years of operation. –Ed.]

But the facility, once up and running, will start by employing at least 100 people, so that's a nice start. Google has apparently gone through the same deal with North Carolina recently, though their deal was a little smaller: $600 million investment for a server farm that opened last year.

More backend for Mobile Me? More power for the App Store or a project like it? A giant building full of Cubes running 24 hours a day? Or something we haven't even dreamt of yet?

Astute readers noticed some Apple store downtime earlier this morning. While I was hoping for something soaked in Unicorn tears, I guess I'll settle for a drool-worthy Xserve update.

The rumors were right on target, and the new Xserve sports Intel's "Nehalem" Xeon processor (just like the recent Mac Pro refresh), which Apple is touting as offering "twice the performance" when compared to last year's model.*

* There is always an asterisk in these types of comparison so please read the fine print before taking any marketing slogans as gospel.

The new Xserve systems look really hot. Check out these specs for the $2999US base model:

• a single 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Xeon 5500 series processor with 8MB of fully shared L3 cache
• 3GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC RAM
• a single 160GB 7200 rpm SATA Apple Drive Module
• dual Gigabit Ethernet on-board
• two PCI Express 2.0 x16 expansion slots
• NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 256 MB with Mini DisplayPort output
• two FireWire® 800 and three USB 2.0 ports

And of course, the requisite unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard.

If the standard offerings aren't powerful enough, the Xserve can be customized to include two Quad-Core Xeon's running at 2.26, 2.66 or 2.93 GHz. An 8-core 2.26 Xserve configure like the base system runs $3599US.

The new Xserve also offers an optional 128-GB SSD boot drive, as well as options for RAID cards, and dual or quad channel 4Gb Fibre channel cards.

This generation of chipsets is more energy efficient and Apple is touting the newest Xserve as the "greenest ever."

The new Xserve is available now at Apple.com and at your local Apple store or authorized dealer.

MacRumors is calling attention to a PC World report: new Nehalem-based Xserve models are expected soon, based on a slipup on Apple's Hong Kong site (gotta watch those ALT tags, folks!). The replacement units for Apple's Harpertown and Penryn Xeon-based rackmount gear should be able to leverage the new chip architecture and power management features to supercharge parallel operations in the Snow Leopard version of Mac OS X Server.

If you're in the market for Xserves, would you buy now for a known quantity or wait for the latest and greatest? Let us know below.

Attention Xserve administrators: Apple has created an Xserve Field Guide web app that can you can use to jog your memory when you're standing in front of a server and can't remember how to perform some manual task.

The web app is designed to be viewed on a Mac, iPhone, or iPod touch, and requires Safari as the browser. If you need to identify what model of XServe you're working on, want to know how to install spare parts, would like to decode what blinking lights on the Xserve mean, or even determine how to choose a startup drive using the system identifier button, it's all in this web app.

You can visit the web app from your favorite browser here:

http://help.apple.com/server/guide/desktop.html

or from your iPhone at this URL:

http://help.apple.com/server/guide/main.html

Thanks to TwitterMail tipster mvcoile!

Keeping up with the Leopard-centric changes to managed preferences and mobile accounts is crucial if you're responsible for a labful or campus-ful of Macs, and you want to gracefully control what permissions or resources your wanton users have when they log in. One great resource for Mac admins diving into MCX (managed clients for OS X) for the first (or hundredth) time is Apple engineer John DeTroye's Tips & Tricks documentation.

We mentioned John's Tiger edition of the T&T docs last year, and now that he's updated the handbook for Mac OS X 10.5 and Server 10.5, you'll want to bring your library up to date. Gone is most of the material specific to machine imaging techniques (I strongly recommend NetInstall [PDF], which is working better under Leopard than it ever did before), making room for more discussion of MCX settings and portable home directories. Download your free copy of the T&T file today and it'll make your life easier tomorrow.

With Mac OS X 10.5.5 on the update list for the day, Apple has also decided to release a number of shiny, happy updates for the Mac OS X Server geeks among us. At the top are two versions of Mac OS X 10.5.5:

• Mac OS X Server 10.5.5 (341 MBs)
• Mac OS X Server 10.5.5 Combo Updater (729 MBs)

If you don't wish to update to 10.5 yet, don't worry about it, you can still apply the Security Update 2008-006 that is included in the OS X 10.5.5 server update. This update, available for PPC & Intel Servers running Mac OS X 10.4, weighs in at 118 MBs.

Once you are done with those wonderful happy not so fun system updates and reboots, why not give the "WebObjects Update 5.4.3 for Mac OS X 10.5 " update a whirl?

And there you have it, all the Enterprise updates from Apple today! We know what all the IT people around the country will be doing tomorrow. Rebooting at least once.


Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

One area that the Mac has long lagged behind its PC counterparts is in custom tuning, particularly overclocking. With the Intel Macs this has naturally started to change, though the toolset for overclocking in OS X has been rather barebones. So it's interesting to see that the German division of ZDNet has released the ZDNet Clock tool for OS X.

Using the ZDNet Clock tool Mac Pro and Xserve owners (and those only) can boost the processor, front side bus, and memory frequency resulting in a not insignificant "free" performance gain. It should be noted that overclocking puts a strain on the hardware and should be used with caution as it's certainly possible to damage your Mac. Furthermore, there are several side effects in OS X including distorted system time and problems when waking from sleep (the overclocking is disabled on wake). Nonetheless, for those of you out there lucky enough to have a Mac Pro (or Xserve) and crazy enough to push your hardware to the edge may want to have a look.

The ZDNet Clock tool is a free download from ZDNet (the link is in German, click the Jetzt herunterladen button to start the download) and requires a Mac Pro or Xserve running Leopard.

[via AppleInsider]