Supermicro Ships 6Gb/s SAS 2.0 Solutions
Raising the Bar in Enterprise Storage Performance with Comprehensive SAS 2.0 Server, Workstation and Blade Product Lines
24 August 2009 Source: www.supermicro.com
Supermicro have announced the launch of new Server Building Block Solutions that deliver 6Gb/s SAS 2.0 performance. The launch includes eight systems plus five serverboard platforms, two SuperBlade servers, and three Universal I/O (UIO) cards. These new product lines incorporate the latest LSI 6Gb/s SAS controller IC (SAS2008), 6Gb/s SAS RAID-on-Chip (SAS2108) and MegaRAID software stack.
"Supermicro's high-performance 6Gb/s SAS2 solutions raise the bar in enterprise storage by doubling the bandwidth and offering superior scalability, reliability and enhanced features," said Charles Liang, CEO and president of Supermicro. "Our innovative Server Building Block Solutions, incorporating proven LSI SAS and RAID technology, enable customers to improve their storage performance and power efficiency, without having to pay a price premium."
Supermicro's initial launch of eight new Intel Xeon 5500 (Nehalem) processor-based systems with onboard 6Gb/s SAS technology includes 1U, 2U, 3U and 4U rackmount or tower servers and workstations with both 2.5" and 3.5" hard drive support. Based on the X8DT6-F, X8DA6, X8DTW-6+F, X8DTH-6F and X8DTL-6F serverboards, Supermicro SAS 2.0 systems feature the industry's most advanced thermal and power designs to deliver optimal performance-per-watt and performance-per-dollar. Supermicro also introduced the industry's first blade servers based on 6Gb/s SAS technology, the SBI-7126T-S6 and SBI-7426T-S3, for 10-blade and 14-blade enclosures, respectively.
For flexible storage applications, Supermicro's new Universal I/O (UIO) add-on controller cards support eight internal 6Gb/s SAS ports and RAID functionalities. With a PCI Express 2.0 host interface and intelligent architecture, these controllers double the data transfer rates of their 3Gb/s predecessors and are designed to easily integrate with existing 3Gb/s SATA and SAS infrastructures for improved performance and scalability.
"As the market transitions to 6Gb/s SAS, LSI is the vendor of choice among leading OEMs such as Supermicro to enable their next-generation server solutions," said Bill Wuertz, senior vice president and general manager, Storage Components Division, LSI. "The LSI 6Gb/s SAS controller and RAID-on-Chip ICs build upon our industry-leading 3Gb/s SAS technology, delivering superior levels of performance, reliability and scalability for servers, workstations and blade solutions."
"The new 6Gb/s SAS-enabled Supermicro workstation, storage and blade solutions deliver numerous benefits that both large enterprise and SMB customers crave," said Henry Fabian, executive director of marketing, Seagate. "By adding Seagate's industry-leading 6Gb/s SAS enterprise Savvio (2.5-inch) and Cheetah (3.5-inch) drive families, these solutions provide unprecedented levels of performance, scalability, reliability and data integrity and are ideal for today's most demanding enterprise applications."
6Gb/s SAS offers a number of significant improvements over 3Gb/s SAS and SATA such as 6Gb/s data transfer rates and standardized zoning as well as support for cable lengths of up to 10 meters to ensure storage integrity in large cluster and datacenter deployments. The 6Gb/s SAS controllers also interact with expanders and other infrastructure devices to improve system diagnostics, status, management, configuration and initialization. 6Gb/s SAS enhances system robustness and enables larger storage topologies through multi-device interoperability.