networkZONE Products for the week of December 13, 2010
PMC-Sierra says…
Industry’s First 6 Gbit/s Unified Serial RAID Controller Channel Storage Solution with Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection
Adaptec by PMC Series 6 Controllers Deliver Superior Bandwidth and Reliability with SAS 2.0 and PCI Express Technology
PMC-Sierra, Inc. has announced the Adaptec by PMC family of Series 6 RAID controllers designed to excel in high I/O transaction and high bandwidth processing applications. Based on PMC-Sierra’s market-leading, multi-core SRC 8x6G RAID-on-Chip (RoC) controller, the Adaptec Series 6 family is the industry’s first 6Gbit/s Unified Serial RAID controller channel solution with Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection which reduces operating costs and minimizes environmental impact.
“Since the acquisition of the Adaptec channel storage business in June, we have been focused on leveraging PMC-Sierra’s SRC RoC technology to bring a 6Gbit/s SAS controller to the channel,” said Jared Peters, vice president and general manager of PMC-Sierra’s Channel Storage Division. “We’re launching our Series 6 solutions just as the market and ecosystem for 6Gbit/s channel storage products has begun to emerge. With our industry-proven SRC RoC as the core, our feature-rich Series 6 family of storage controllers goes beyond RAID with Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection and intelligent power management for maximum reliability, lower power consumption and reduced costs.”
With support for up to 256 SATA/SAS 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 family provides robustness and compatibility with today’s 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 percent 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 Gen2 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 compared to previous generation interfaces that take more than three hours.
“Today’s storage infrastructures require technologies that provide the highest levels of performance with robust functionality, efficient power and cooling and environmental characteristics,” said Roger Cox, Research Vice President, Data Center Systems, Gartner. “Storage products with these capabilities help system integrators and others to further differentiate their storage solution offerings.”
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 family also features advanced intelligent power management, which reduces storage power and cooling costs by up to 70 percent.
The Series 6 RAID controllers feature:
- Superior bandwidth with 6Gbit/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
- Centralized storage management with Adaptec Storage Manager
- Broad range of operating systems supported
EN-Genius Says…
Powered by PMC’s SRC 8x6G RAID-on-Chip (RoC) controller and wrapped in Adpatec’s RAID protocol stack and management software, these storage adapters should be able to avoid the commodity pricing wars by including several proprietary features that appeal to enterprise environments where reliability, performance and total cost of ownership matter. Like their previous high-performance RAID chips, the RAID6 card controller is derived from their PM8000 Tachyon SAS/SATA device (see my April 2007 review), but it adds important differentiators like advanced power management, zero-maintenance cache protection and high-performance solid-state drive (SSD)-based read caching.
The adapter’s intelligent power management features include logic that spins down unused drives according to programmable parameters. Among other options, the controller can be set to always turn off its drives after a predetermined interval or observe certain critical periods of the day when they are left spinning to deliver faster response. These and other power-saving capabilities have won the adapter compliance with the stringent Green Grid standard that’s becoming a de facto baseline requirement for energy-conscious data centers.
All three controller cards include provisions to support a unique Flash-based cache protection mechanism that eliminates the short-lived battery-powered hold-up systems used in most other controllers. When it senses an unplanned power interruption (ie a “dirty” shut-down), it moves the contents of its traditional 512 M DRAM cache to a NAND Flash module using a super-capacitor to provide the transition power. Besides being able to preserve cache data almost indefinitely, using Flash memory eliminates the Li-Ion memory hold-up in batteries which can be a real maintenance headache, especially in larger facilities which employ lots of storage hardware.
Adaptec has also made a brave foray into hybrid storage technology which pairs a rotating disk and a solid-state drive (SSD). The adapter’s optional hybrid configuration supports either RAID 1 or RAID 10 operating modes, making it one of the very first commercial products of its type. Even in this relatively early hybrid design, PMC and Adpatec seem to have put in extra effort to make hybrids practical with controller software that plays off the strengths of both the rotating and solid-state media to enhance both overall system performance and SSD life. While the added cost and cycle-limited life of the SSD may not be appropriate for all applications the added performance and reduced latencies afforded by Flash-based storage will certainly be welcomed in systems where speed is at a premium.
This family of controllers upholds Adaptec’s traditional ability to work well with nearly any commercial operating system, including Windows, VMWare, FreeBSD and Solaris. Since even many major systems houses now rely on open-source code, it’s no surprise that Adaptec’s open-source driver supports most flavors of Linux including Red Hat Enterprise, Debian and Ubuntu.
Series 6 RAID controllers are sampling now to select customers. Available in singles and kits, the suggested retail pricing for the Adaptec RAID 6405, Adaptec RAID 6445 and Adaptec RAID 6805 ranges from $395 to $630.
Adaptec-by-PMC Storage Products
|
