Xsan 1.3 Released

The first Apple announcement at NAB 2006 is the release of Xsan 1.3 – the biggest improvement being the ability to use LUNs greater than 2TB, removing the need to slice your 7TB RAIDs. Read on for the other improvments…The following list is taken from a post to the Xsan users list by Eric Zelenka:

labeling and initializing LUNs greater than 2TB in size
preventing labeled LUNs from becoming unlabeled
improving AFP performance when re-sharing Xsan volumes
more accurate file permissions when sharing Xsan volumes via AFP
accessing Xsan volumes larger than 16 terabytes in size
greater server stability when re-sharing Xsan volumes via NFS
handling quotas with no associated user or group name
maintaining access to Xsan volumes when metadata controller fail-overs occur
providing metadata controller services to 10.3.9 and 10.4 systems running Xsan 1.2
operating Xsan in environments with a mix of 10.3.9 and 10.4 systems
compatibility with third-party applications and devices

Xsan Admin has also been updated for use in all deployments.

More information will be available from the Xsan support pages, including KB articles on working with LUNs greater than 2TB, and the difference between bandwidth expansion (adding LUNs in order to increase performance) and storage expansion (adding LUNs to solely increase capacity).

As always, test things before upgrading your SAN and make sure your backup is current before doing any updates.