Refusing to let its rivals at CES 2005 steal the limelight before Macworld next week, Apple has announced it is finally shipping its Xsan file system software as well as a faster Xserve G5.

Xsan was first announced last April and is primarily targeted at video editing and broadcasting, but also can used simply for storage. The 64-bit file system runs atop Mac OS X, supporting simultaneous access and multiple high-bandwidth video streams. By including file-level locking into the file system, Apple says separate clients can read and write data at the same time.

"Apple's pro video and IT customers now have an affordable, high performance SAN file system on Mac OS X," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Together, Apple's Xsan file system software and Xserve RAID storage hardware deliver a powerful, easy-to-manage, enterprise class SAN solution at a breakthrough low price."

Apple has also boosted the speed of its Xserve G5 server to dual 2.3GHz processors, along with adding support for 8GB of memory. Unlike Microsoft's server offerings, Xserve includes an unlimited client license that allows any number of Mac, Windows or Linux machines to connect to the server.

Pricing for Xsan is set at $999 USD per client and per server, while the new Xserve G5 runs $3,999 USD. A cluster-optimized version of the dual 2.3GHz Xserve is available with a 10-client license for $2,999 USD.