RAID controllers for high I/O transaction apps

Based on PMC-Sierra's multi-core SRC 8x6G RAID-on-Chip (RoC) controller, the Adaptec Series 6 range is said to be the industry's first 6Gb/s Unified Serial RAID controller channel solution with Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection, which reduces operating costs and minimises environmental impact.

With support for up to 256 SATAS devices using SAS expanders and an eight-lane PCIe Gen 2 host interface bus connection, the Series 6 delivers high performance, scalability and flexibility.

While the Series 5 range offers robustness and compatibility with the market standard of 3Gb/s performance, the enhanced bandwidth of the Series 6 with SAS 2.0 interfaces and the PCIe Gen 2 host connection offers a 60 per cent higher sustained sequential throughput than previous generations of Adaptec controllers.

The Series 6 delivers up to 2GB/s sustained data-transfer rate to a host of applications that require high sequential bandwidth.

At peak performance, this solution offers 4.8GB/s through the SAS 2.0 interfaces and 4GB/s through the PCIe Gen 2 host interface, delivering enough bandwidth for high streaming applications, such as editing and broadcasting uncompressed 3D video streams.

Using this solution, a 14TB array used as a virtual tape library can be filled in less than two hours.

With the significant adoption of Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection, the need to replace Lithium Ion batteries is eliminated and, as a result, reduces the hazardous waste disposal previously required in cache-critical computing applications.

This product range also features advanced intelligent power management, which reduces storage power and cooling costs by up to 70 per cent.

Features: high bandwidth with 6Gb/s SAS 2.0 interfaces and PCIe Gen 2 host connection; zero-maintenance cache protection (option); hardware RAID levels 0,1,1E,5,5EE,6,10,50,60; Hybrid RAID 1,10 support for arrays of Solid State Drives (SSD) and Hard Disk Drives (HDD) for maximum performance; intelligent power management; centralised storage management with Adaptec Storage Manager; range of operating systems supported.