Apple discounts storage

Apple officials have released a new storage-area network and an upgraded server in hopes of gaining ground among government and commercial customers. Officials have set what they describe as aggressive prices for the products to spur sales, with discounts for federal buyers.

The new Xsan file system is priced at $999 retail, or $829 for government employees and $499 for government agencies. It provides fast access to data stored at centralized locations across a network. Xsan, a 64-bit cluster file system, works in conjunction with Apple's storage hardware and the Macintosh OS X operating system.

Apple has also upgraded the Xserve server, adding dual 2.3 GHz G5 processors, a 1.15 GHz system bus and up to 1.2 terabytes of storage. Prices vary for the server based on the exact configuration. Prices start at $2,999, or $2,669 for government employees, $2,399 for federal agencies and $2,499 for state and local government organizations.