jamoo -
I'm quite familiar w/ the xsan components you're talking about, the short answer is just.. yes you can do what you're talking about and the answer lies with storNext. it started on linux, and apple bought and borrowed the key components for their bastardization of unix so they could sell it as xsan on OS X. i used to install and integrate this stuff for a local bay area VAR and have really had it up to here with it all, but after finally finding budget to upgrade everything we needed to snowleopard (yes it was a service pack, YES it should have been free) and the latest xsan, not to mention upgrading our servers BOTH to intel macs so they can run snowey lepard in the first place (damn you apple) now things are running quite nicely, as we were promised yeeeears ago from apple about Xsan. I'm still ticked spotlight stopped working after one of the 10.x updates and then showed up as a "new feature" in xsan 2 but that's neither here nor there. sly move, apple. very sly.
- can I use the Apple Fibre Channel PCI cards in Linux servers?
yes. It's an LSI card. there's a quick linux script to get the model info of all your pci cards, which will tell you what you need to add to a "linux drivers" google search.... can't recall that script ATM.
- can I use the Apple XSan system with Linux servers?
You can use xsan and storNext together... but there are limitations... check this chart:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1517 and do some research on your own. I'm not sure where all this is these days but storenext is your missing keyword.
....i must ask, what editing/gfx software were you hoping on running? for me that has been the only shortcoming in the linux world. hell yes it's stable but there has not been a strong enough push in the development and follow-through of any really mentionable motion graphics or video editing software in the GNU world... nuke seems interesting but shake was the crossover, an app Apple bought then crashed into a wall... seems their way with the most promising and cutting edge creative tools that come anywhere close to being a competitor within Apple's pro-geek-sumer price range that Autodesk hasn't already gobbled up and sells either as combustion on crap OS or smoke/flint/flame for an arm and a leg on a real operating system... you do the math. i guess we all just need to get a grant??
