Adaptec Series 5Z RAID Controllers

Adaptec, Inc. announced the availability of the Adaptec Series 5Z Unified Serial (SATA/SAS) RAID controller family. 

These high-performance controllers integrate an industry first, flash-based Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection module that provides data center managers with a single controller solution for data protection in the event of both power loss and drive failure. Designed to replace a current generation of Lithium Ion battery-based cache back-up devices, the Adaptec RAID Series 5Z is an integrated solid state solution that significantly reduces annual data center operating costs and environmental impact. The controllers offer an integrated, maintenance-free design, eliminating the need to monitor battery charge levels or shut down servers for battery replacement.

"As enterprise storage demands skyrocket, we see an enormous need for feature-rich, maintenance-free data storage I/O solutions that work to lower overall IT costs and provide significant environmental advantages," said Scott Cleland, director of marketing, Adaptec. "For both SATA and SAS drives, the Adaptec Series 5Z family not only delivers the performance, scalability and power efficiency that our customers demand, but with Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection, it offers a simple, maintenance-free solution that provides a critical layer of data protection that is often overlooked."

Built on the industry-leading Adaptec RAID Series 5 high-performance architecture, the Adaptec Series 5Z family offers an innovative approach to protecting at-risk data held in controller cache and addressing common battery back-up deficiencies. Since the quickest way for a RAID controller to fulfill a read or write request is to serve data out of its cache, enabling and protecting the RAID controller cache offers significant performance benefits while also safeguarding against the loss of cached data during a power or system failure.

With approximately 1 TB of data residing in cache for every 3,000 servers, a reliable, easy-to-use back-up solution is invaluable in case of a system power failure. The Adaptec Series 5Z’s Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection protects data stored in controller cache for up to 10 years with no installation, monitoring, maintenance, disposal or replacement costs.  Unlike Lithium Ion batteries, Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection protects cached data immediately, instead of hours after battery conditioning, providing instant protection and immediate optimized RAID performance.  Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection enhances performance without the hassles of traditional battery-backup devices.

Environmental & ROI Advantages
The Adaptec Series 5Z family underscores Adaptec’s commitment to developing power-efficient and environmentally-conscious products. Adaptec’s Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection eliminates the need for Lithium Ion battery hazardous waste disposal previously required in cache-critical computing applications. In addition, these controllers are exempt from special International Air Transport Association (IATA) Lithium Ion packaging and shipping regulations, eliminating the need for costly labeling, testing and extensive documentation. The Adaptec Series 5Z family also features Adaptec’s innovative Intelligent Power Management, which reduces storage power and cooling costs by up to 70 percent.

"IT managers and system architects today must identify new technologies that will  both handle the increasing influx of data and offer the lowest total cost of ownership," said Roger Cox, research vice president, Storage Research unit, Gartner Group. "Innovative new I/O solutions that optimize system performance, while at the same time eliminate the need for maintenance, use less energy and reduce hazardous waste will be highly-valued in today’s data centers and fast growing cloud computing market."

In private traditional data center environments or across massive scaled-out virtualized data center server environments running VMware software or Xen, the Return-On-Investment (ROI) potential of the new Adaptec Series 5Z controllers is significant.

This approach can provide substantial savings
by eliminating costly functions, such as: 

• the year-to-year expense of purchasing replacement batteries,
• the ongoing costs associated with downtime when installing/re-charging batteries, and
• the disruption costs when a power failure occurs resulting in the loss of data. With the typical four-year cost of using Lithium Ion batteries adding up to more than $2,000( per server, the Adaptec Series 5Z family offers the industry’s most cost-effective, complete and efficient data protection solution.

Industry Support for Adaptec Series 5Z Innovation
"Ensuring long-term data integrity in the medical industry is critical, and at Codonics, we strive to design products that deliver a new level of data protection while improving our customers’ operating expenses by reducing or eliminating field service costs," said Gary Keefe, vice president of new product development, Codonics. "The Adaptec Series 5Z RAID controllers with Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection provide a cutting-edge approach to eliminating the costs and environmental burdens associated with the legacy battery-backup devices that many medical storage solutions currently design in. Codonics is excited to continue its partnership with Adaptec and develop innovative medical products that deliver performance, reliability and value to our customers."

"Until now, customers operating Penguin’s High Performance Computing clusters and associated storage resources had to pay special attention to regular maintenance of the backup batteries in RAID controllers, resulting in additional operational costs," said Jussi Kukkonen, director of product management, Penguin Computing, provider of High Performance Computing clusters based in San Francisco, Calif. "Adaptec’s new Series 5Z RAID Controllers with Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection eliminate the battery from this equation without compromising cache protection or performance. It provides significant new design flexibility for our conventional Linux file servers and distributed file system building blocks used in high performance scalable storage solutions. This is a real win-win-win for customers, the environment and Penguin."

"As a leading provider of data center servers, storage and high-performance computing cluster solutions, Silicon Mechanics is committed to integrating advanced, innovative technologies that offer our customers proven cost efficiencies and performance advantages," said Mike Dusche, Vice President of Sales, Marketing & Products for Silicon Mechanics.  "Adaptec’s new Series 5Z is a great example. Its Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection provides our customers with another level of data protection, and eliminates the hassle of maintenance, support and the headache of battery disposal."

"In our growing on-demand cloud computing environment, the loss of any mission-critical information found in controller cache – financial transactions, supply chain instructions, a customer order – during a power failure or any other type of system interruption, is particularly vulnerable and can be catastrophic to our customers and to our reputation," said Jacob Linscott, director of IT systems – Linux, SoftLayer.  "Adaptec’s new Series 5Z RAID Controllers with Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection provide an easy, economical, and environmentally sound solution to virtually eliminate the possibility that loss of cached data will ever happen."

About Adaptec RAID Series 5Z Unified Serial Controllers
The Adaptec RAID Series 5Z family is ideal for storage systems and bandwidth intensive storage applications in data centers, such as online transaction processing servers, web servers, digital surveillance, and streaming applications.

The family consists of three products:

• Adaptec RAID 5445Z with 8 ports (4 internal and 4 external),
• Adaptec RAID 5805Z (8 internal ports) and
• Adaptec RAID 5405Z (4 internal ports).

Each member of the Adaptec Series 5Z family is supported by Adaptec Storage Manager (ASM), which centralizes management of all Adaptec RAID products and allows for local and remote browser or application-based management across the network from a single console. The Adaptec Series 5Z energy-efficient, low-profile controllers feature a dual core RAID on Chip (ROC), DDR2 533MHz write cache and an x8 PCI Express host interface bus connection.

Pricing and Availability
All three Adaptec Series 5Z controllers are shipping and available through worldwide distributors and resellers. The controllers are priced at the following MSRPs: Adaptec RAID 5405Z (US$785), Adaptec RAID 5805Z (US$965), Adaptec RAID 5445Z (US$1,045).