User manual
INTRODUCTION
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port controllers support one DDR2-533 DIMM socket that allows
for upgrading up to 2GB of memory. The controllers use Marvell
4/8 channel SATA PCI-X controller chips, which can simultaneously
communicate with the I/O processor and read or write data on
multiple drives.
Unsurpassed Data Availability
As storage capacity requirements continue to rapidly increase, us-
ers require greater levels of disk drive fault tolerance, which can be
implemented without doubling the investment in disk drives. RAID
1 (mirroring) provides high fault tolerance. However, half of the
drive capacity of the array is lost to mirroring, making it too costly
for most users to implement on large volume sets due to doubling
the number of drives required. Users want the protection of RAID 1
or better with an implementation cost comparable to RAID 5. RAID
6 can offer fault tolerance greater than RAID 1 or RAID 5 but only
consumes the capacity of 2 disk drives for distributed parity data.
The 8/12/16/24-port RAID controllers provide RAID 6 functionality
to meet these demanding requirements.
The SATA RAID controllers also provide RAID levels 0, 1, 10(1E),
3, 5, 6, Single Disk or JBOD congurations. Its high data avail-
ability and protection is derived from the following capabilities:
Online RAID Capacity Expansion, Array Roaming, Online RAID Level
/ Stripe Size Migration, Dynamic Volume Set Expansion, Global
Online Spare, Automatic Drive Failure Detection, Automatic Failed
Drive Rebuilding, Disk Hot-Swap, Online Background Rebuilding
and Instant Availability/Background Initialization. During the con-
troller rmware ash upgrade process, it is possible that an error
results in corruption of the controller rmware. This could result
in the device becoming non-functional. However, with our Redun-
dant Flash image feature, the controller will revert back to the last
known version of rmware and continue operating. This reduces
the risk of system failure due to rmware crashes.
Easy RAID Management
The SATA RAID controller utilizes built-in rmware with an embed-
ded terminal emulation that can access via hot key at M/B BIOS