Microsemi Introduces Smart HBAs & RAID Adapters

Today Microsemi Corporation announced the production of its new Smart Storage SAS/SATA adapters for data centers. The new portfolio, which includes the Microsemi Adaptec HBA 1100 family, SmartHBA 2100 family and SmartRAID 3100 family, is based on the company’s latest 28nm SmartIOC 2100 and SmartROC 3100 storage controller integrated circuits (ICs). These new adapters aim to deliver high performance, low power, reliability and feature-rich solutions tailored to a variety of server storage applications, including software-defined storage (SDS), cold storage and enterprise applications.

Today Microsemi Corporation announced the production of its new Smart Storage SAS/SATA adapters for data centers. The new portfolio, which includes the Microsemi Adaptec HBA 1100 family, SmartHBA 2100 family and SmartRAID 3100 family, is based on the company’s latest 28nm SmartIOC 2100 and SmartROC 3100 storage controller integrated circuits (ICs). These new adapters aim to deliver high performance, low power, reliability and feature-rich solutions tailored to a variety of server storage applications, including software-defined storage (SDS), cold storage and enterprise applications.

Microsemi states that its new Smart Storage solutions can be used in any server storage application with 12 Gbps SAS or 6 Gbps SATA hard disk drives (HDDs) or solid state drives (SSDs). While PCIe and NVMe interface are becoming more and more common, SAS and SATA will most likely remain the dominant interface for some time. The Smart Storage solutions have been optimized to pull the best benefits out of both SSDs (higher performance) and HDDs (power-optimized for colder storage). And the two different types of technologies have features that fit better to their usage.

The HBA 1100 is optimized for SDS, cold storage and raw high-performance connectivity. Its features include:

• Adapters with up to 24 ports using 28nm SAS/SATA-optimized silicon, offering an optimal power profile for the target applications
• Support for host-managed and host-aware shingled magnetic recording (SMR) drives
• Broad operating system (OS) driver support, including inbox driver support
• Performance of up to 1.7 million input/output operations per second (IOPS)

Building off of the benefits of the HBA 1100, the SmartHBA 2100 adds the option of basic hardware RAID. The 2100 is built for SDS applications that need RAID for boot drive or SMB applications. Benefits include:

• Basic RAID without compromising on the requirement for a fully featured and functional HBA, which is required for multi-path IO and SDS applications
• Mixed mode enables drives to be independently configured as raw drives or as part of a logical volume
• True hardware RAID for RAID 0,1,10 and RAID 5
• Industry’s only basic RAID solution with more than eight ports

The SmartRAID 3100 family offers the most in functionality, acceleration through caching and the highest data availability for the most demanding enterprise storage applications. It’s features include:

• Adapters with up to 24 ports using 28nm SAS/SATA-optimized silicon, offering an optimal power profile for the target applications
• Zero Maintenance Cache Protection (ZMCP) with a cache size of up to 4GB and integrated cache backup circuitry for optimal cost, thermal performance and operating efficiency
• Board options without cache backup
• maxCache 4.0 included on all adapters with up to ~2TB SSD cache
• Roadmap to maxCrypto controller-based encryption

Availability

Microsemi's Unified Smart Storage Stack, as well as the fourth generation SmartRAID 3100, SmartHBA 2100 and HBA 1100 series board level product families, are available now.

Microsemi Adaptec SAS/SATA RAID Adapters

Microsemi Adaptec Host Bus Adapters

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