Pity there's still no support for, say, a Clariion storage array.

As a professional storage person, I completely fail to see how Apple expect to be taken seriously with Promise, I mean, I don't even use their stuff at home (anymore!) If I were going to take a server manufacturer, who didn't make their own storage hardware, seriously I'd expect HDS, IBM, EMC, possibly HP.

Apple have to realise that their main competition is Windows and Linux servers, probably running on Proliant hardware which has Stoargeworks. They must do better.

Apple's main competition is Avid's Unity products - these SANs are for a very specific market, and Apple are making inroads.

I work in storage too and must 2nd Frank's viewpoint - the customers Apple has in mind with this as well as ye olde XServe RAID have specific requirements along the lines of

.) cheap

.) high storage - low node-count ratio

.) high sequential read/write speed

.) low redundancy requirements

This is mainly due to most data being working sets of large uncompressed video and audio. For that sort of need the XServe RAID was passable and i guess so would the Promise be (never heard of 'em other than SATA Raid controllers on substandard mobos...).

Doesn't mean I'd use it instead of a DS4800 or EVA next time i I'm asked to create a SAN for DB or mail storage...