News

posted on 13 May 2008 13:35

Adaptec has launched a unified serial controller to connect SAS tape and both SAS and SATA RAID drive arrays to servers. The entry-level card answers tape manufacturers' requests for a single constant server attachment point for SAS tape drives.

Jurgen Frick, Adaptec's EMEA product manager for the components business, said that tape drive and device suppliers had to qualify their products against every change in a server's motherboard and chipset combination when they use a SAS HBA (host bus adapter) to connect their products to a server. Motherboards and chipsets are constantly changing, creating a repeated qualification need.

They asked if Adaptec could combine a SAS HBA with a SAS and SATA RAID controller so that they could qualify their tape products once against that device and so be insulated from server motherboard and chipset variations. This would also help VARs, OEMS and system integrators (SIs) as they would only need one interface card to connect RAID arrays and tape devices to a server instead of two.

Adaptec's new Series 2 RAID controllers do just this, having an added SAS HBA function, and use the same ROC (RAID-on-a-Chip) architecture that the firm's Adaptec Series 5 controllers use giving them fast performance, particularly at the entry level where they are pitched, making them a viable alternative to slow software RAID schemes.

Over 300 SATA and SAS devices are supported, including mid-planes, disk and tape drives. RAID levels 0, 1 and 10 are offered and the card's Storage Manager software supports remote access for configuring, managing and monitoring the cards and also for RAID array creation and management.

The cards are plug-and-play compatible with Linux drivers 2.4.2 or later.

The PCIe cards have 128MB of DDR2 cache and can support up to 128 SAS and SATA I/O devices, including tape drives via SAS expander cards.

Suresh Panikar, director, Worldwide Marketing, Adaptec, said:  "The Adaptec Series 2 family is critical to our comprehensive line of Unified Serial RAID controllers. Customers who have specific storage needs - increased RAID performance for disk drives, tape backup, or are working with applications based on Linux - will find our Series 2 controllers exceed those needs."

Bharat Kumar, VP for Worldwide Marketing and Development at Tandberg Data, emphasised the SAS tape drive support point, saying: "We are committed to providing best-in-class SAS tape drive solutions, and the compatibility and performance of the new Series 2 Adaptec controllers is an ideal complement to our LTO family of internal and external SAS tape drives."

There are three models: the RAID 2405 kit has 4 internal ports, a fanout cable, and costs $250. The 2405 Single and 2045 Single also have four ports and cost $225 and $250 respectively.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}