Get The Most Out Of RAID 6

Solution providers looking to eliminate the shortcomings of RAID 5 technology will want to consider the latest controller from AMCC.

RAID's primary benefits are well known: The technology improves fault tolerance, increases performance and creates data redundancy. However, there is a dark side to the technology, under the more frequently implemented RAID 5 scheme, data loss can still occur if the second drive fails while rebuilding. Applied Micro Circuits' 3ware 9650SE SATA II RAID Controller supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, Single Disk and JBOD. The cards deliver 800 Mbytes per second RAID 6 reads and 600 MBps RAID 6 writes. The controller also supports SATA II advanced features such as transfer speeds of 3 GBps and Native Command Queuing.

The PCI Express controller utilizes AMCC's eighth-generation StorSwitch non-blocking switch fabric architecture. StorSwitch improves system performance, data availability and scalability by offloading data I/O processes from the host. Other enhancements include StreamFusion, a cache algorithm that optimizes I/O accesses, and support for the StorSave Backup Battery Unit.

Available in two-, four- and eight-port low-profile and 12-, 16-, and 24-port full-height configurations, the controller also comes with a Chassis Control Unit for enclosure management via I2C. The 3ware 9650SE comes with a configuration management suite: 3ware BIOS Manager 2, 3ware Disk Manager 2 and Command Line Interface. The inclusion of Emergency Flash Recovery protects against failed firmware upgrades.

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