Adaptec Series 8 SAS/SATA RAID Technical Brief

Flexible Configuration Options for Adaptec Series 8
(12Gb/s) and Adaptec Series 7 (6Gb/s)
SAS/SATA RAID Adapters
High-density rack storage environments
require form-factor optimized solutions
that can deliver capacity and flexibility in
configuring direct attach storage.
Available on Adaptec Series 8 and Series 7
RAID adapters, Flexible Configuration allows
for automatic configurability of both raw and
logical devices tailored to the application need.
Flexible Configuration offers three settings,
tunable via the adapter's pre-boot tools:
• Auto Volume Mode – Automatically config-
ures all HDD/SSD devices as logical devices
• RAID Mode (default) – Traditional RAID
adapter functionality and usage models
• HBA Mode – Automatically exposes
physical devices to the operating system
By supporting mixed deployments of logical and
physical devices, Adaptec Series 8 and Series
7 adapters make it possible to utilize hard disk
drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs),
Adapter
Setting
Auto Volume Automatically configures all HDDs/SSDs
Mode as logical devices
RAID Mode Traditional ARC functionality and usage models
(raw devices, simple volumes, RAID volumes,
tape devices and autoloaders)
HBA Mode Automatically exposes physical devices
to the OS (HDD, SSD, tape, autoloaders)
along with tape and other storage peripherals,
and control placement of data.
Auto Volume Mode
The Auto Volume Mode setting automatically
configures HDDs and/or SSDs as logical
devices by writing a small amount of metadata
to the drive. The drive is then recognized as a
logical block storage device. The benefit to this
is that onboard adapter memory is used for
caching to accelerate reads/writes and reduce
access times and latency.
RAID Mode
The default adapter setting is RAID Mode,
which provides support for full hardware
RAID data protection, an industry-leading
feature set, maxCache Plus, and more. RAID
Mode also supports all the features and
functionality of Auto Volume Mode and HBA
mode through manual configuration of the
attached devices.
HBA Mode
The HBA Mode setting automatically exposes
(i.e. provides full access to) physical devices
like HDDs, SSDs, tape devices and autoloaders
to the operating system. It supports migration
of disks from onboard SATA interfaces as well
as other SAS/SATA I/O adapters. Additionally,
this mode supports third-party vendor tools
which access/configure drives via mode pages.
Description Supported Devices
Logical Drives
JBODs
Writes > =
ADAPTEC FLEXIBLE CONFIGURATION
Device
Configuration
Automatic
Manual
Automatic
Physical Drives Tape/Other Devices
1U 8-Drive Server
T ECHNICA L BR I E F
Flexible Configuration
>
Highlights
Available on Adaptec Series 8
(12Gb/s) and Series 7 (6Gb/s)
RAID adapters
Three settings
– Auto Volume Mode — Automatically
configures all HDD/SSD devices
as logical devices
– RAID Mode (default) — Traditional
RAID adapter functionality and
usage models
– HBA Mode — Automatically
exposes physical devices to the
operating system
Tunable via the adapter's pre-boot
tools
Automatic configurability of both
raw and logical devices, tailored
to the application need
Ideal for high-density rack storage
environments and expander-based
backplane scenarios
Benefit
•
Acceleration via DRAM read/write caching which can
lower access time and latency
•
Support for full hardware RAID data protection, features
& RAID level migration
•
Support for maxCache (SSD Caching)
• Support all Auto Volume / HBA mode features
• Supports migration of disks from onboard SATA interfaces
or other SATA/SAS I/O controllers
•
Provides full access to the physical device from the
OS/App layer
• Support for 3rd party vendor tools to access and configure
devices through mode pages