LSI Delivers Adapters

MILPITAS, Calif. -- LSI Corporation (NYSE: LSI) today announced channel availability of the second-generation MegaRAID ROC (RAID-on-Chip) SAS adapters. With these adapters, channel customers can now build single-platform SAS infrastructures that support low-cost SATA drives and high-performance SAS drives with the added data security of RAID 6 support.

Based on the LSI SAS1078 controller IC, these MegaRAID products provide a high-performance internal RAID solution for traditional server applications, such as databases and email, where data loss simply is not acceptable. The adapters’ RAID 6 support is a critical feature for the channel market where lower-reliability SATA drives commonly are used. RAID 6 tolerates two simultaneous drive failures and thus, the ability to manage unrecoverable media errors during rebuilds.

“The demand for both SAS and SATA is growing in the channel and, in conjunction, so is the demand for RAID 6 support as customers look to take all necessary precautions to protect their data,” said Tom Kodet, worldwide channel marketing manager, LSI. “With the availability of our new MegaRAID solutions, LSI is providing channel customers with a single source for meeting all of their SAS, SATA and RAID infrastructure requirements.”

The RAID 6 MegaRAID adapters now available in the channel, include the MegaRAID SAS 8708ELP, MegaRAID SAS 8704ELP, and the MegaRAID SAS 8888ELP models. All of these low-profile adapters are powered by the proven LSI SAS1078 IC, which is an I/O storage engine that transparently performs all data protection, data checking, and restoration tasks. The SAS1078 features a PCI Express host interface which enables the MegaRAID products to overcome traditional PCI host bus bottlenecks and to deliver 1.5 GB/s sustained sequential throughput for applications such as high performance data streaming or backup. Also contributing to the outstanding performance of this MegaRAID SAS family is its 667 MHz cache interface, the fastest in the industry.

The MegaRAID SAS 8708ELP features eight internal-connect ports, while the MegaRAID SAS 8704ELP features four internal-connect ports. With selectable connectors, the 8888ELP serves multiple deployment needs, enabling users to select one of three connector configurations: two internal, two external or one of each. All of these low-profile products are supported by the MegaRAID Management Suite of software and offer 3 Gb/s throughput per port. They also support both SAS expanders and SATA native command queuing (NCQ).LSI Corp.