LSI Adapter Eases Storage Woes

The PCI-X host adapter is a dual-channel card, which provides increased speed and bandwidth. The card features two internal and two external Ultra 320 SCSI connectors. Other features include 64-bit addressing support, flexible memory and caching policies, and Microsoft Clustering Server support.

<|>CRN Test Center engineers evaluated the dual-channel RAID card by running Intel's Iometer benchmark that reads and writes data to a storage device according to a script. An 11-stage script was used, with each stage using different data block size and data position randomness. As Iometer ran, the script decreased the block size while increasing the randomness of the data's position. The bus performed most impressively in a multiple-drive array when the data was more random and the blocks of data were smaller.

The device is especially advantageous when used with a database to allow companies with skyrock- eting data stores to access data quickly or to efficiently move it to storage. Companies whose employees routinely access data stored on servers can significantly reduce delays in retrieval and transfer times. The card also facilitates the transfer of data to SANs or external storage devices.

The card was installed on a server running Microsoft Windows Server 2000, and its 64-bit slot allowed for maximum bandwidth use. After installation, two SCSI cables were attached, each with three Seagate Cheetah 10K.6 Ultra 320 36-Gbyte hard drives.

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