![]() Similar but less capable niche offerings, like SoftRAID, have existed and done perfectly well for a long time. Seems to me the market for ZFS for OSX is small enough that as a business this never was a good venture. I can go 64tb raw storage space in my current setup or 84tb if I use my additional 8 bay (I think I would have to switch out ESATA cards however to get all the externals? Not sure if it expands past 16 drives) It's 3x4tb RAID 0 (internal), 7x2tb RAID 5, 2x4tb RAID 0 (x2) (all in one 12 bay ESATA enclosure) I even have one bay open. ![]() It's not hard to put some TB in a Mac Pro. I think the more direct equivalent to their products on the Mac side would be something like Xsan, not a bunch of Thunderbolt enclosures hooked up to somebody's workstation. ![]() for PSUs, controllers, cabling, etc.), management features, and support. I wasn't thinking of theoretical limits: As a matter of practicality, even with external enclosures, there are only so many physical drives that you can hook up to a Mac Pro directly, and even then that doesn't necessarily strike me as a great idea, given the lack of redundancy (e.g. Why would they take the risk? Did you really think sales of the ZEVO software to consumers would be a mass-market product where GreenBytes would make huge revenues? Now, I'm not exactly sure where GreenByte's price points come in, but I think rolling your own hardware using ZEVO software and commodity hardware could, at least potentially, undercut their business. Granted, big shops wouldn't want the hassle, but I doubt they would be using GreenBytes stuff anyway. If you want to go "green," get an i5 based Mac-mini and use its Thunderbolt port. If an IT guy could purchase a JBOD box and stuff it full of drives, maybe daisy chain a few of them using firewire or thunderbolt interfaces, and install ZEVO software on an older Mac Pro, you'd have a powerful file server on the cheap. I agree with you that GreenBytes provides pro-boxes which are going to be very pricey (especially since some appear to use SSD drives), but that's exactly my point. Also, dont media shops / video production companies use Macs Pros accessing large data sets? Storage in the tens of terabytes shouldn't be a feasibility issue for OS X. Why do you say that? Their Solidarity box addresses between 15-60 TB - I'm not aware of any (theoretical) limitation on addressing in OS X for mass storage. ![]() How? The boxes that they're selling appear to be significantly larger-scale than what would be feasible on a Mac storage-wise. Oh well, I guess its not dead yet, but it don't smell so good now, at least for my humble application (Drobo replacement - see first post.) If they sold it as a software only product as originally intended, it would potentially compete with their hardware product offerings. I suspect that their intentions would be to bundle ZEVO with some pricey hardware. Quickly looking at GreenBytes' site, their offerings don't appear to be directed at the consumer/prosumer/tech hobbyist market. I can understand needing a revenue stream ASAP, but the sputtering progress and lack of communication is a great way to kill expectations for a new product. While I'm sure the wild fires in Woodland Park have slowed progress, Ten's Compliment's tiered release of their product was clearly not a good start. Hopefully this will free up Don Brady's time to focus on the technical aspects of getting ZEVO up and running as a real product. Ten's Complement has joined GreenBytes to continue their work and now they have more development support." Robinson says that GreenBytes will have more to share regarding ZEVO's future "down the line." As to the future of the project, GreenBytes' spokesman Michael Robinson responded to TUAW's inquiry: "ZEVO's ZFS on OS X is safe.
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