LSI MegaRAID Controllers With PCIe 3.0

LSI Corporation introduced its latest MegaRAID 6Gb/s SAS+SATA controllers and HBAs featuring the PCIe 3.0 interface.

MegaRAID SAS 9286CV-8eCC

Seven new LSI MegaRAID controllers are offered with four or eight ports and provide a combination of intelligent performance, enterprise RAID data protection and interoperability. Three new LSI HBA models provide connectivity for servers and appliances in a variety of enterprise environments including corporate datacentre, the cloud and HPC.

"In the face of massive data growth, system builders and resellers are racing to meet increasing demand for larger, more scalable systems that deliver reliability and high performance," said Brent Blanchard, director of WW channel sales and marketing, LSI. "The addition of PCIe 3.0 on the new MegaRAID controllers and HBAs brings dramatically higher levels of performance and allows greater system design flexibility, with proven LSI product quality and reliability."

The MegaRAID controllers increase performance and protection for business and mission-critical data stored on performance SAS, capacity SATA HDDs or application-accelerating SSDs. Each controller is powered by the LSI SAS 2208/2308 RAID-on-Chip using 6Gb/s SAS technology and includes dual 800MHz PowerPC processor cores with 1GB cache memory.

"LSI MegaRAID controllers and HBAs have been trusted core building blocks for EchoStreams server and storage systems, delivering performance and reliability while also being easy to qualify and integrate," said Gene Lee, president and CEO, EchoStreams Innovative Solutions, LLC. "The latest LSI PCIe 3.0-based 6Gb/s SAS controllers and HBAs allow us to take advantage of the unprecedented memory and I/O bandwidths of the latest Intel Romley platform and offer our customers the ultimate throughput and I/O per dollar ratio that no one has been able to achieve before."

The PCIe 3.0 interface delivers a bit rate of 8 gigatransfers per second (GT/s), roughly twice the bandwidth of the prior generation, and incorporates a number of new features to improve data transmission and protection as well, including transmitter and receiver equalisation, PLL improvements and clock data recovery.

The 9271-8iCC and 9286CV-8eCC MegaRAID cards come in prepackaged configurations that include the LSI CacheCade Pro 2.0 application acceleration software that optimises SSD caching performance. Additional models include the onboard LSI flash-based CacheVault data protection option for greater system protection.

Pricing and Availability

MegaRAID SAS+SATA Controllers

• MegaRAID SAS 9270-8i single/kit: $780/$835
• MegaRAID SAS 9271-4i single/kit: $540/$575
• MegaRAID SAS 9271-8i single/kit: $780/$835
• MegaRAID SAS 9271-8iCC single: $1,050
• MegaRAID SAS 9286-8e single: $995
• MegaRAID SAS 9286CV-8e single: $1,255
• MegaRAID SAS 9286CV-8eCC single: $1,525

LSI SAS+SATA HBAs:

• SAS 9207-4i4e: $335/$415
• SAS 9207-8i single/kit: $305/$385
• SAS 9207-8e single: $510

The new HBAs listed above are available. The MegaRAID products are sampling now with availability expected during Q3 2012. The products are supplied through the network of distributors, integrators and VARs.