| RAID controller news |
Adaptec Unveils Entry Level
RAID Controllers
MILPITAS,
Calif. - May 13, 2008 - Adaptec Inc. today unveiled a new family of
entry-level RAID controllers shipping this month.
They offer compatibility with more than 300 SATA/SAS devices,
including midplanes, disk drives, and tape drives and are also "plug and
play" compatible with Linux drivers 2.4.2 or later. Pricing for a 4 port
adapter is about $250.
...Adaptec profile
New Markets for RAID Controller OEMs
Editor:- May 8,
2008 - traditionally what stirs up a hornet's nest in the RAID controller HBA
market is the introduction of new interfaces.
I've chronicled the
emergence of RAID controllers using incrementally faster versions of parallel
SCSI, then fibre-channel (from the 100Mbps days), SATA and SAS for the past
16 years.
These technology changes always provide a window of opportunity to oems who
want to be #1 in the new standard.
In the next few years a new market
will open up for RAID controller HBAs aimed at the
SSD market.
An
ideal RAID adapter for an SSD needs different characteristics than a hard disk
array.
- better latency - the access time in the RAID becomes a critical
competitive factor for the overall SSD array performence.
- smaller RAM cache (and different sorting algorithms).
I predict
that the SSD RAID adapter market will become as important a new market segment
as the appearance of a new interface standard like SAS was - in the past decade.
Wasabi Improves RAID Adapter Support in iSCSI OS
Norfolk,
Virginia - April 2, 2008 - Wasabi Systems today released v4.1 of its
network storage operating system, Wasabi Storage Builder for iSCSI SAN.
Some of the new features include:- support for RAID 6, 60 for most current
LSI,
Intel,
SuperMicro and
3ware
SAS /
SATA
RAID controllers,
including improved logging and error recovery capability and full support for
LSI 1078. Extended reliability options for nested RAID levels in addition to
those offered by the RAID controller, including RAID 61, 51.
Wasabi
Storage Builder v4.1 provides full support for virtualized server environments
using both VMware and Virtual Iron products, and the ability to use the Wasabi
Storage Builder target to boot diskless servers, workstations or clients using
WinBoot or NetBoot products from emBoot Inc. MSRP starts at $1,695. ...Wasabi Systems profile
Adaptec Launches 28 Port RAID Adapters
HANOVER,
Germany - March 3, 2008 - Adaptec Inc. today unveiled the first RAID
adapter family offering up to 28-ports.
With 24 internal and 4
externalports Adaptec's 52445 PCIe
RAID controllers
($1,595 MSRP) enable up to 256
SATA or
SAS drives to be
seamlessly connected to a single system.
...Adaptec profile
New AMCC Firmware Upgrades SAS RAID
Performance
SUNNYVALE,
Calif - March 3, 2008 - AMCC today announced a major firmware upgrade
for its 3ware 9690SA SAS RAID controller line.
The new 9.5.0.1
code gives up to a 40% performance increase and broadens 3rd party SAS
expander compatibility. ...AMCC
profile
IBM Chooses LSI RAID
MILPITAS,
Calif - February 20, 2008 - LSI Corp today announced that its MegaRAID
technology was selected for integration into IBM's System x server
line.
The ServeRAID-MR10M
SAS/SATA controller is a
high performance x8 PCI Express RAID Controller for external DAS storage. This
RAID adapter utilizes the LSI SAS1078
ROC and provides
investment protection by supporting SAS and SATA
hard drive
configurations and providing performance enhancements enabled by a standard
battery. The battery provides cached data protection during unexpected power
outages for ServeRAID-10M when operating in its higher performance, write back
mode.
The ServeRAID-MR10k SAS/SATA adapter enables full
ROMB for LSI
1078-based subsystems on high performance servers, including the IBM System
x3950 M2 and x3850 M2 servers. The System x3950 M2 is ready for virtualization
right out of the box by eliminating software setup and installation time and
enables four times the amount of memory to be hosted on a single chassis
compared to the previous system for more virtualization workloads.
The ROMB solution is ideal for space-limited server environments. The
adapters offer external connectivity with the ability to cascade up to 10
EXP3000s per port. It also features removable Battery Backed Cache and a RAID
activation key along with RAID 6 Protection.
...LSI profile,
RAID controllers
Editor's
comments:- the
MegaRAID
brand has been around for a long time. LSI acquired it along with 200 RAID
employees from AMI in
September 2001
the week before 9/11.
Promise Ships New SAS RAID Controllers
MILPITAS,
Calif - January 28, 2008 - Promise Technology Inc. today announced
immediate general availability of its SuperTrak EX and FastTrak TX host-based
SAS RAID controllers.
Promise's SuperTrak EX offerings are 4- and
8-port internal, hardware-based
SAS and
SATA
RAID controllers using
Intel's 81348 IO
processor. They support RAID 5 and RAID 6 and are designed for data protection
needs based on entry-level and midrange server platforms running all popular
Linux distributions as well as Windows. Target applications include
disk-to-disk backup, video
capture, post production and database applications.
Promise's FastTrak
TX offerings are software-based SAS RAID cards designed for workstation
applications.
...Promise
Technology profile
Intel Expands Use of LSI's RAID Chips
SANTA
CLARA - December 12, 2007 - Intel Corp and LSI Corp today
announced an agreement to broaden the availability of LSI SAS/SATA RAID chip
solutions for Intel's worldwide channel network.
The two
companies have collaborated since 2003.
...Intel profile,
...LSI profile,
storage chips
EasyCo Shows Power of Managed Flash
Technology in RAID-5
Wallingford
PA - December 2, 2007 - EasyCo LLC (a North American distributor for
Mtron Flash SSDs) has just completed detailed performance testing on
Mtron drives, both as single drives and in RAID-5 arrays.
Of
special interest will be confirmation that Flash SSDs operate differently in
RAID-5 arrays.
Hard drives running
RAID-5 normally perform significantly slower than those configured RAID-10.
With Flash, RAID-5 and RAID-10 perform virtually identically.
At large
block sizes, the Mtron drive is 10-40% faster than a 15K RPM
hard drive, mostly
depending on what part of the HDD you are accessing. When coupled with the MFT
management layer, the Mtron drives are basically 50x faster than a 15K
HDD regardless of the read/write mix.
...read
the article (pdf), ...EasyCo
profile, ...Mtron profile
Addonics Launches PCI Flash SSD RAID
Adapter
SAN
JOSE, CA - October 23, 2007 - Addonics Technologies today announced a
PCI flash RAID adapter.
The Addonics AD4CFPRJ enables users to
create a low cost large capacity
SSD. It fits into any PCI
slot and allows as many as 4 Compact Flash media of any capacity to be used
like an ordinary hard drive.
The adapter includes built-in firmware, which allows the CF cards to be
configured as one large volume, 4 individual drives, or configured for
redundancy with support for RAID 0 (Striped), RAID 1 (Mirrored), and RAID 10
(Mirrored Striped).
With the increased capacity and lowering costs of
flash media, replacing
the hard drive with CF as a boot drive is now a viable alternative because CF
offers lower power consumption and no moving parts.
The adapter supports UDMA, DMA, and PIO hard drive modes. OS support
includes DOS, Windows 98/ME, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Vista, and Linux kernel 2.4+ .
The Addonics Quad CF PCI adapter has a MSRP of $49.95 ...Addonics profile
Editor's
comments:- The risk with this approach is that many CF cards aren't
designed for intensive write operations and don't have internal wear levelling
controllers. That's what differentiates a
flash SSD from
vanilla flash storage.
If a user is tempted (by the low price) to install the Addonics adapter in a
server application - with the wrong type of flash cards - the storage media may
fail in under a year.
Aristos Logic Samples Multi Interface
RAID Chip
Foothill
Ranch, California - October 15, 2007 - Aristos Logic announced today
availability of the AL3450 UltraSlice-MPx - 3rd generation RAID storage
processor chip.
The AL3450 integrates the multi-processor RSP
engine, 3Gb/s
SAS and 4Gb/s
Fibre Channel host and
disk interfaces and a PCI-X interface on a single chip. Developed in
response to some of the fastest growing segments of the market such as blade
servers, the AL3450 features enterprise class performance and reliability while
delivering low power consumption in a small footprint. It is available
immediately in sample quantities to Aristos Logic's OEM partners.
...Aristos Logic
profile, storage chips,
RAID controllers
Qsan Ships iSCSI-SAS RAID Controllers
Taipei, Taiwan - July 27,
2007 - Qsan announces the general availability of 2 new
single-board RAID controllers - the P200C and S500C.
P200C is a high performance
iSCSI-SAS
RAID controller built
around Qsan's RAID/iSCSI stack. With 4x GbE ports connected to the host,
either working independently, trunking, or MPIO together, Qsan lab data shows up
to 120,000 IOPS (512 byte block-size). P200C can achieve up to
600MB/sec including both read and write. The P200C supports upto 80 drives
(128T) via expander JBODs.
Other included features are:- RAID 6,
on-line migration, web-based management and QSnap snapshot. Qsan has certified
P200C with VMware ESX server based on many customer requests.
"P200C is the strong and unique answer to the iSCSI doubters in
the market: those who think iSCSI is slow, those who think iSCSI is low-end, and
those who does not believe server-based iSCSI is reliable." said Eric Kao,
sales & marketing VP in Qsan.
S500C is a SAS-SAS RAID controller
built upon Intel's
IOP341. Qsan lab data shows up to 1GB/sec maximum performance. ...QSAN profile
LSI Passes 1 million SAS RAID Chips
Milestone
MILPITAS,
Calif., July 17, 2007 - LSI Corp today announced it has shipped more
than 1 million SAS RAID-on-Chip ICs.
"Reaching this volume
so quickly (in just 18 months) validates our strategy of entering the
SAS market from its
inception and being one of the first companies to deliver a solution," said
Dan Roehrich, LSI's VP of marketing.
IDC estimates that SAS hard disk
drive shipments to enterprise storage and server applications in 2007 will be
more than triple 2006 shipments. IDC predicts SAS will achieve 26% enterprise
market share in 2007, out-shipping all other drive interfaces.
...LSI profile,
RAID systems,
storage chips
ATTO Claims Fastest SAS RAID Controller
Amherst,
NY - July 10, 2007 - ATTO Technology, Inc. today announced that
internal benchmark testing has demonstrated its ExpressSAS RAID controllers to
be the industry's highest performance overall Serial Attached SCSI products.
ATTO's ExpressSAS controllers demonstrated more than 10x faster performance than
competitive products in a series of bandwidth-stressing benchmark tests, such as
running multiple backup streams, enterprise databases and document management
applications. The ExpressSAS products are built around Intel's new
IOP348 with a dual
core storage processor that allows individual processor cores to be dedicated
and optimized for SAS
protocol processing and RAID
algorithms.
...ATTO profile
Supermicro Unveils Universal I/O SAS RAID
xxSan
Jose, CA - June 20, 2007 - Super Micro Computer, Inc. and LSI Corp
today announced 3 Supermicro Universal I/O SAS RAID cards based on the
SAS1078 RAID-On-Chip from LSI.
Optimized for Supermicro
UIO
servers,
these
cards feature 667MHz 256MB DDRII cache to deliver hardware RAID 5 and 6
data protection with flexible options for internal or external
SAS/SATA connections.
"When installed, these high-performance UIO SAS cards become part
of the server board, and the system still retains all of its PCI-Express and
PCI-X slots for expansion cards," asserts Charles Liang, CEO and president
of Supermicro. "Supermicro UIO cards enable our customers to create
optimized SAS solutions to match their specific requirements."
...LSI profile,
...Super Micro profile
Pivot3 Launches RAIGE
Spring, Texas June 12, 2007
Pivot3 Inc today announced an IP-based storage cluster that it claims
delivers up to 5 times the performance at ½ the cost of competitive
solutions.
The Pivot3 RAIGE (RAID Across Independent Gigabit
Ethernet) Storage Cluster is the first system based on Pivot3's block-level
virtualization architecture. Pivot3 RAIGE is available now starting at an MSRP
of $17,499.
"By leveraging off-the-shelf components and
utilizing a highly parallelized I/O architecture, Pivot3 RAIGE Storage Cluster
delivers a much better cost-per-capacity and price/performance ratio than
competitive products," said Arun Taneja, founder and analyst of
Taneja Group. "Unlike
other block-based clustered storage products, Pivot3 is a 'truly' distributed
RAID architecture. We see this technology as shaking up the category and raising
the bar for what constitutes a high-performance, easy-to-use, fault-tolerant
IP-based storage system."
...Pivot3 profile,
RAID controllers
Ciprico Ships New SAS RAID HBAs
Minneapolis,
MN - May 7, 2007 - Ciprico Inc. announced today that it is starting
volume production of its new RAIDCore RC5000 line of SAS and SATA II RAID
controllers.
The company is demonstrating the new cards this week
at Gartner's
IT Visions conference. The new
RC5000 series
controllers provide support for the latest
serial attached SCSI
and SATA
specifications, as well as supporting both the traditional PCI-X and newer PCI
Express bus standards.
US recommended retail pricing for the
enterprise level RC5152-08 and RC5252-08 products are $299, with the entry
level RAID 0, 1, 10 versions of the cards, the RC5110-08 and RC5210-08 priced at
$219. Production is starting now, with the 12 and 16 port cards expected to
start shipping in Q307. ...Ciprico
profile, RAID systems,
RAID controllers,
Storage Events |
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RAID
controllers - 2001,
2002,
2003,
2004,
2005,
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Using
Solid State Disks to Boost Legacy RAID and Database Performance - article by
Texas Memory Systems
Adding a solid state disk to inter-operate
with an existing RAID storage system can be like sprinkling fairy dust which
makes everything go faster. That's often cheaper and more effective than
upgrading servers and licenses or replacing existing storage. ...read the article,
Solid state disks | |
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10 Ten
Tips for a Successful RAID Implementation
article by Infortrend
In the 20 years since I first worked on
RAID I've read and
published countless articles about this subject.
So what can a new
RAID article tell you?
Plenty of practical stuff - from a modern
perspective. ...read
the article
, ...Infortrend
profile | |
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The New
RAIDn Algorithm - How Does it Compare? - article by Tandberg Data
If
you think you know RAID because you use RAID level 5 and all that ancient
technology from the 1980s then think again.
The newer RAID algorithms
today provide better data survival when you get multiple disk failures and
provide a higher percentage of usable storage. ...read the article,
...Tandberg Data profile,
RAID systems,
RAID controller cards | |
| . |
 |
the
Benefits of SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) for External Subsystems - article by
Adaptec
This introduction to Serial Attached SCSI gives you
an idea of the performance, compatibilities, applications and roadmap for this
new directly attached disk connection standard. With throughput capability
faster than 2Gbps Fibre-channel systems and faster than ultra320 SCSI - the new
SAS products not only provide an upward migration path for parallel SCSI
applications but also open the door to a new class of high performance high
reliability enterprise systems.
...read the article,
...Adaptec profile,
Serial Attached SCSI | | |