User Guide

Intel® Integrated RAID Solution User Guide 1
1 Introduction to the Integrated
RAID Solution
Overview
The Intel
®
Integrated RAID Solution provides cost benefits for the server or workstation
market that requires the extra performance, storage capacity, and redundancy of a RAID
configuration. The Intel
®
Integrated RAID Solution includes the following RAID
features:
• The Integrated Mirroring solution, which provides features of RAID 1
• The Integrated Mirroring + Striping solution, which provides features of RAID 10
• The Integrated Mirroring Enhanced solution, which provides features of RAID 1
Enhanced (RAID 1E)
• The Integrated Striping solution, which provides features of RAID 0
By simplifying the configuration options and by providing firmware support in its SAS-3
host adapters, Intel can offer the Integrated RAID solution at a lower cost than a hardware
RAID implementation.
Intel Fusion-MPT
™
firmware supports Integrated Mirroring volumes, Integrated
Mirroring + Striping volumes, Integrated Mirroring Enhanced volumes, and Integrated
Striping volumes. You can create up to two Integrated RAID volumes on each Intel SAS-
3 controller.
The Intel
®
Integrated RAID Solution supports the following Intel SAS-3 controllers and
the host bus adapters based on these 12Gb SAS Controller chips:
• LSISAS3008
• LSISAS3004
Intel
®
Integrated RAID firmware uses the same device drivers as the standard Intel
Fusion-MPT-based controllers, thereby eliminating the need for complex backup software
or expensive RAID hardware. To conserve system resources, the Integrated RAID
firmware operates independently from the operating system. The BIOS-based
configuration utility, documented in Chapter 3 and Chapter 5, makes it easy to configure
mirrored and striped volumes. The Integrated RAID solution is currently available as an
optional component of the Fusion-MPT architecture on Intel SAS-3 controllers.
Note: In this document, the terms volume, RAID volume, array, and RAID array are used
interchangeably. Volume and array both appear on the screens of the BIOS-based
configuration utility. The term disk means both hard disk drive (HDD) and solid state
drive (SSD), and the HDDs or SSDs can support either SAS or SATA protocol.