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• Adaptec Series 8 SAS/SATA RAID Technical Brief

Adaptec Series 8 SAS/SATA RAID Technical Brief

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ADAPTEC FLEXIBLE CONFIGURATION TECHNICAL BRIEF

High-density rack storage environments

require form-factor optimized solutions

that can deliver capacity and exibility in

conguring direct attach storage.

Available on Adaptec Series 8 and Series 7

RAID adapters, Flexible Conguration allows

for automatic congurability of both raw and

logical devices tailored to the application need.

Flexible Conguration oers three settings,

tunable via the adapter’s pre-boot tools:

• Auto Volume Mode – Automatically cong-

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),

along with tape and other storage peripherals,

and control placement of data.

Auto Volume Mode

e Auto Volume Mode setting automatically

congures HDDs and/or SSDs as logical

devices by writing a small amount of metadata

to the drive. e drive is then recognized as a

logical block storage device. e benet to this

is that onboard adapter memory is used for

caching to accelerate reads/writes and reduce

access times and latency.

RAID Mode

e 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 conguration of the

attached devices.

HBA Mode

e 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/congure drives via mode pages.

>

Flexible Configuration Options for Adaptec Series 8

(12Gb/s) and Adaptec Series 7 (6Gb/s)

SAS/SATA RAID Adapters

Flexible Configuration

Highlights

Available on Adaptec Series 8

(12Gb/s) and Series 7 (6Gb/s)

RAID adapters

Three settings

– Auto Volume Mode — Automatically

congures 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 congurability of both

raw and logical devices, tailored

to the application need

Ideal for high-density rack storage

environments and expander-based

backplane scenarios

Adapter

Setting

Description Supported Devices

Device

Conguration

Benet

Auto Volume

Mode

Automatically congures all HDDs/SSDs

as logical devices

Automatic • Acceleration via DRAM read/write caching which can

lower access time and latency

RAID Mode Traditional ARC functionality and usage models

(raw devices, simple volumes, RAID volumes,

tape devices and autoloaders)

Manual • Support for full hardware RAID data protection, features

& RAID level migration

• Support for maxCache (SSD Caching)

• Support all Auto Volume / HBA mode features

HBA Mode Automatically exposes physical devices

to the OS (HDD, SSD, tape, autoloaders)

Automatic • 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 congure

devices through mode pages

Host Writes

Disk Device

Writes > =

Threshold Size

Writes <

Threshold Size

Controller Cache

JBODs

1U 8-Drive Server

Host Writes

Disk Device

Writes > =

Threshold Size

Writes <

Threshold Size

Controller Cache

JBODs

1U 8-Drive Server

Host Writes

Disk Device

Writes > =

Threshold Size

Writes <

Threshold Size

Controller Cache

JBODs

1U 8-Drive Server

Host Writes

Disk Device

Writes > =

Threshold Size

Writes <

Threshold Size

Controller Cache

JBODs

1U 8-Drive Server

Logical Drives Physical Drives Tape/Other Devices