HighPoint External 4 Port SAS RAID Controller 4311

HighPoint Technologies announced the RocketRAID 4311 as a new member to the RocketRAID 4300 series of SAS Hardware RAID controllers with Intel Sunrise I/O Processor featuring the Intel IOP348 for Apple Mac Pro systems.

Hardware RAID Controller
The RocketRAID 4311 is a PCI-Express x8 SAS RAID controller with the Intel IOP348 processor and 256MB of DDR-II memory. A single external SFF-8088 connector supports up to 4 SAS/SATA hard drives or up to 128 devices through SAS expanders.

SAS Performance
The RocketRAID 4311 with SAS 15K-RPM hard drives are ideal for new Mac Pro 2009 with Intel Nehalem or previous generation Mac Pro systems. SAS hard drives offer unrivaled performance, reliability and innovation for these applications. SAS provides the highest sequential and IOPS performance  offering lasting value ensuring systems can keep up with growing performance needs over a longer period of time.

SAS Expandability
SAS can expand to 128 devices (SAS/SATA) devices. As more SATA drives and SAS RAID backplanes are added to a storage enclosure, SAS expanders on those backplanes can seamlessly cascaded together. requiring only a minimal number of ports on the HBA, and with more ports available on the expanders.

SATA Hard Drive Compatibility
Connectivity for multiple device types lowers TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), gives flexibility to specify best drive for intended use: SAS for transactional/online performance and reliability, SATA for bulk storage and backup/restore duties.

The SAS/SATA value proposition is simple: SAS hard drives deliver the speed, reliability and scalability demanded in high availability enterprise environments, while high-capacity SATA drives are ideal for bulk storage applications with low cost per GB capacity.

Mac OS X Compatibility
The RocketRAID 4311 is compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 and above and supports booting to Mac OS X.