Looking to help customers and their VARs do more with less, LSI is releasing a new family of drop-in controllers that can be added to existing equipment to enable faster transfer speeds to stored data, but without upgrading entire systems.

The new high-performance MegaRAID SATA+SAS RAID controller cards are based on 6Gb/s SAS technology – an improvement from previous generations that only allowed 3Gb/s. LSI says the MegaRAID 9200 series controllers provide small to midsize enterprises with high levels of RAID performance and scalability for internal and external storage.

That’s because they double the data transfer rate of their predecessor 3Gb/s devices, providing up to 2.85GB/s in sequential reads and 1.85GB/s in sequential writes, according to LSI’s internal testing of the devices.

“The idea here is the investment the reseller has made in the existing technology doesn’t go away,” says Suresh Panikar, senior manager, worldwide channel marketing at LSI. “If they have a need for higher performance they can add one of the 6Gb/s-based controllers. It is backward compatible.”

The new family of controllers also features new software technology that enables the use of longer cables. They also support self-discovery and self-configuring expanders.

It also features LSI SafeStore Encryption Services, together with SEDs, to secure drives’ data from unauthorized access or modification as a result of theft, loss or repurposing of drives, according to LSI. Local key management resides in the controller.

LSI is pitching the technology for storage environments for video applications and medical and research applications, as well as the existing base of file servers and Web servers.

The new product family is part of LSI’s efforts, first launched earlier this year, to expand its partner base of resellers, VARs, solution providers, systems integrators and other systems builders.

Pricing is as follows:
Internal ports:

• MegaRAID 9260-4i (4-port):           $389
• MegaRAID 9260-8i (8-port):           $599
• MegaRAID 9260DE-8i (8-port):        $729

External ports:

• MegaRAID 9280-8e (8-port):          $859
• MegaRAID 9280DE-8e (8-port):       $945

LSI says the 9200 series controllers feature the LSISAS2108 6Gb/s SAS RAID-On-Chip (ROC), 512MB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM and an x8 PCI Express 2.0 host interface. The controllers are bundled with MegaRAID Storage Manager software for simplified creation, monitoring and maintenance of storage configurations.