A new 4U, 48-drive storage beast has lumbered onto the scene, The Sun Fire X4500 server (aka "Thumper"), and the Test Center get a chance to tangle with it. Fresh from the Test Center: A new 4U, 48-drive storage beast has lumbered onto the scene: The Sun Fire X4500 server, aka “Thumper.” After tangling with “Thumper,” InfoWorld analyst Paul Venezia found it to be an excellent performer — though you really need to employ Solaris to reap the true benefits. “The speed of file system creation and raw I/O possible with [Sun’s ZFS (Zettabyte File System)] surpasses that of any other file system available today, and truly makes the X4500 usable in enterprise settings.” Plus, we have a screencast, so you can see ZFS on Thumper in action.Sun lets Leopard secret out of the bag: Speaking of Sun’s ZFS technology, the company’s CEO Jonathan Schwartz told a group in Washington D.C. On stage Wednesday in Washington D.C. that the “open-source file system will replace Apple’s long-used HFS+ in Mac OS X 10.5,” Computerworld’s Greg Keizer reports. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard Sun mention Apple’s plans to adopt ZFS, but Apple, as is its tradition, remains mum on the subject.Isilon a resilient file server: Test Center Storage Guru Mario Apicella recently got his hands on the compact Isilon IQ 200, a clustered file system with an appealing sticker price. The system “can provide great scalability, good performance, and multiple levels of resilience that make losing data an unlikely occurrence,” Apicella finds, plus optional software adds some useful capabilities, like snapshots and remote sync. One key drawback: It lacks a second power supply. Nevertheless, it’s worth checking out. Technology Industry