The so called ‘industry’s first’ PCIe Gen3 high port-count 6Gb/s SAS/SATA Raid adapters have been released by PMC, Inc.
The company’s Adaptec Series 7 family are claimed by the company to be the first Raid adapters to fully leverage PCIe Gen3 bandwidth, this is said to provide a very high degree of performance for many enterprise and cloud computing applications. The advantages include 16 direct-connected solid state drives (SSDs), enabling this series of adapters to deliver up to 450,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) on a 4K random read block size.
This is said to be equivalent to nearly 10 times the performance of previous-generation Raid adapters.
The family has performance characteristics including, up to 16-ports in a low-profile MD2 form factor and up to 24-ports in a full-height half-length form factor. This is achieved by integrating PMC’s advanced 24-port Raid on Chip (RoC) and High Density (HD) Mini-SAS connectors. However there are many more enabling technologies incorporated into the Adaptec Series 7 family which include:
- Adaptec maxCache 3.0, third-generation caching software, which utilises SSDs for read and write caching to improve IOPs by 25 times, reduces latency by 25 times in read-intensive applications, and improves IOPs by 14 times in write-intensive applications;
- Third-generation Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection (ZMCP), which uses flash memory to protect cached data, eliminating the installation, monitoring, maintenance, disposal and replacement costs associated with lithium-ion battery backup units (BBUs);
- New industry standard High Density (HD) Mini SAS connectors and cables for ease-of use, fit, and function in dense server environments;
- Adaptec maxView, which simplifies monitoring and configuring Raid adapters in a system through a convenient web-based interface that runs on any browser (including mobile);
- PMC’s PM8015 RAID-on-Chip (RoC), which combines an x8 PCIe Gen3 SAS interface with 24 ports of 6Gb/s SAS/SATA;
- ‘One Click Setup’ capability allowing Raid, simple volume and physical drive configurations.
“With the evolution of hyper scale data center deployments, demand for fast and reliable access to data continues to grow” said Matt Eastwood, Group VP and GM of Enterprise Platforms at IDC. “With double the bandwidth compared to previous generations, devices that utilise the full capabilities of the new PCIe Gen3 interface represent a major step forward in providing that access.”
The complete family of Adaptec Series 7 Raid adapters includes eight separate SKUs, and are available now through the company’s worldwide distributors and storage channel partners.
PMC
