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Storage Controllers Improve Performance Without Full System Upgrade

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 – […]

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Jessica Davis

Jul 28, 2009

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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.

Storage Controllers Improve Performance Without Full System Upgrade

Jessica Davis

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