Adaptec makes low-end RAID gear ROC hard
Series 5 begat Series 2
Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
Adaptec is launching a new line of entry-level unified serial RAID controllers today, using the revamped design of its top-tier Series 5 gear announced in March.
The Series 2 controllers can handle hardware RAID 0, 1, and 10 for SAS and SATA disk arrays, as well as tape drives using SAS expanders.
The devices run on a 800MHz dual-core RAID-on-a-chip (ROC) semiconductor design, improving the previous architecture of a separate CPU and I/O controller linked by a bridge. This configuration has been scaled down from the Series 5 controllers.
Adaptec reckons ditching the software RAID solutions commonly offered in entry-level systems for hardware RAID provides superior performance and configuration options, all independent of the operating system. It also claims better support for open source drivers and "no vulnerability to viruses."
The controllers have 128MB of DDR2 cache and support up to 128 SATA/SAS I/O devices. Throughput at each drive port is 3Gb/s.
Adaptec's new lineup is composed of two controller models.
- The Adaptec RAID 2405 has four internal ports, one SFF-8087 internal connector, and costs $225 (~£116).
- The 2405 controller is also sold with a fanout cable included as a "kit" for a $25 premium.
- The Adaptec RAID 2045 has four internal ports, one SFF-8088 external connector and sells for $250 (~£129).
Supported operating systems include Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 Vista, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Suse Linux Enterprise Server, SCO OpenServer, UnixWare, Sun Solaris 10 x86, FreeBSD, and VMware ESX Server. A full list of what systems are supported is available here.
The Series 2 controllers will begin shipping by the end of this month. ®
COMMENTS
Linux support
There is an open source driver for Linux from Adaptec. They have one that supports all their RAID cards in the Linux kernel since 2.4.2. More info on that is available under http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/_common/linux
@Fred
You sound like a typical home user who hasn't thought of enterprise requirements, or maybe you just figure that bigger is better.
RAID is not an alternative to backups, they deal with different problems. If your service must be highly available you need redundant hot-swappable hardware to survive hardware failure (in this case a disk). Backups mean nothing if you lose business because of downtime. RAID cannot replace backups either. If you notice you accidentally deleted something a month ago RAID won't help you.
RAID10 is the only viable option for high performance systems, especially where lots of writes are involved. I'd only consider RAID5 or 6 where performance is not a major consideration, such as HD based backups.
Adaptec
Adaptec makes hardcore rock-solid RAID controllers that more or less look like SCSI cards to an OS. 78xx & 79xx require a driver module. So does 3Ware, so does Intel or AMD or Nvidia or VIA or SiS disk controllers. The work is done in the hardware even though a driver is required.
Software RAID off-loads the calculations to the CPU.
What exactly are all you people disputing about?
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
What you need to know about cloud backup
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM implementer’s checklist
