Announcing the new version of iPod shuffle was not the only news from today’s Apple agenda. The Cupertino company unveiled Xsan 2, the first major upgrade to its Storage Area Network (SAN) file system for Mac OS X.

The most interesting feature of Xsan 2 is MultiSAN, which allows users on a single workstation to access multiple SANs at the same time.

Xsan 2 is fully integrated with Mac OS X Leopard and Mac OS X Server Leopard and is now qualified to work with third-party RAID storage. Along with Apple’s Xserve RAID, Xsan 2 supports third-party RAID solutions from Promise Technology in configurations tuned and optimized for Xsan, Mac OS X Server and Apple’s professional applications.

It also takes complete advantage of core Mac OS X features, such as Spotlight to search across multiple SAN volumes.

Also, Apple explained that the administration tools have been completely redesigned in Xsan 2. Xsan 2 intelligently handles different data types, file sizes and usage scenarios for ideal performance. For example, administrators have the ability to pre-set volume workload settings for optimal streaming of all file types, from very large files, such as uncompressed HD video to small data center files.

"These features make it easier to set up and deploy a SAN. This was one of the biggest concerns from users," Eric Zelenka, senior product line manager for Apple's server and storage groups, said for Computer World. "They didn't have the technical expertise to do this on their own. We've simplified the entire SAN process."

The price of Xsan 2 is $999 and it has been qualified with Xserve, Mac Pro and Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X cards. Xsan 2 supports qualified Fibre Channel switches from vendors such as Brocade, QLogic and Cisco.