Two Xsan Software Updates

First of all, what is Xsan? To be honest, I had no idea until now what it is, and probably most people that are only using Macs without being specialists are in the same situation as I am, so here it goes...

Xsan is Apple's high-performance SAN file system for Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server that enables you to share one or more Xserve RAID devices with multiple Xserve or Macintosh systems. After installing the Xsan file system, these computers can read and write to the same storage volume at the same time, and the software included by Xsan consists of management and monitoring tools, the files system client software and integrated setup and the metadata controller software.

Xsan supports volume sizes up to almost 2 petabyte in size and can be used in a cross-platform environment alongside Windows and UNIX/Linux based systems, using the ADIC StorNext File System.

The last release of Xsan was 1.4, issued on August 7, 2006, but the last updates that I found about today are getting the Filesystem and Admin versions up to 1.4.1.

The Filesystem Update solves reliability, usability and compatibility problems, and the specific fixes included into the 16MB update package include preventing file system metadata corruption, compatibility with Apple and third party applications, metadata controller failovers during power autages and network disconnects and more, according to Apple.

The Admin Update has 9.2MB in size and offers improved reliability for remote administering, configuring and maintaining of the Xsan deployments, including fixes for expanding storage pools and volumes, accurately reporting Fibre Channel multipathing errors, displaying progress messages while performing lengthy operations or preventing custom configuration changes from being overwritten during a save.

If you're in charge with administering a system using Xsan and didn't find out about these updates yet, then I am sure I don't have to tell you what to do...