Dot Hill Virtual RAID Adapter for AMD

Dot Hill Systems Corp. announced that its Virtual RAID Adapter (VRA) software is available for AMD’s newest core logic chipset.

The new VRA-for-motherboard solution is based on AMD’s SP5100 southbridge chipset and Dot Hill’s new VRA technology for enterprise servers, leveraging the Dot Hill RAIDCore product line. VRAs replace traditional RAID-on-motherboard (ROMB) solutions with a robust, server-class data protection solution for internal storage that rivals that of more expensive add-in-card-based RAID controllers. Eliminating the need for such controllers along with the associated power, cooling and support costs, VRAs allow businesses to lower server storage costs, while providing the requisite robustness and performance to power transaction-intensive applications.

Dot Hill will offer a basic RAIDCore driver and management solution for Windows and Linux as part of its server reference designs to OEMs, ODMs and motherboard manufacturers that use the SP5100 core logic chipset. This will enable support for high performance RAID protection for disk drives inside AMD chipset-based servers.
 
“As our server-class embedded platforms become available through numerous infrastructure partners, small businesses and enterprises can have a viable and savvy alternative to traditional hardware-based RAID solutions,” said Buddy Broeker, director, Embedded Computing Solutions, AMD. “We believe Dot Hill is an outstanding go-to-market partner for motherboard-based RAID solutions due to their extensive expertise in designing RAID solutions for industry storage and server OEMs.”
 
“By offering a basic VRA version supporting AMD’s latest server platform, we are enabling their customers to bundle a new class of server RAID with unique after-market upgrade options,” said Andy Mills, vice president of marketing and business development, Dot Hill. “VRAs provide a robust and scalable storage solution for today’s entry to mid level servers, providing enterprise level features traditionally associ/tmp/EasyCrop253/Dot Hill Virtual RAID Adapter for AMD.jpgated with higher cost systems.”
 
Better Alternative
to Server Hardware- and Software-based RAID
In today’s servers, several types of disk controllers and I/O ports may exist. These includes the core logic or Southbridge disk controller which has 4-6 SATA I/O ports, a discrete non-intelligent 4- or 8-port SAS/SATA disk I/O controller either directly mounted onto the motherboard or as part of a low cost add-in card, or a complete RAID-on-chip solution (ROC) that is an intelligent CPU device typically implemented on an add-in card.
 
Dot Hill VRA technology enables server, storage and motherboard vendors to integrate RAID technology into their products by leveraging the power of today’s multi-core server CPUs instead of a dedicated and power-hungry ROC-based RAID add-in board, helping to reduce hardware, power, cooling and support costs. The basic RAIDCore and enhanced RAIDCore VST products directly support the built-in core logic SATA and optional SAS/SATA I/O ports that come as part of server system, enabling vendors to easily add RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, 50, 1n and 10n capability to these otherwise unused built in or lower cost SAS/SATA controllers, without the need for a more expensive ROC based solution.

The VRA technology leverages a sophisticated RAID software stack, enabling today’s servers to effectively process RAID tasks without compromising performance needed for other operations. Its innovative write-caching engine provides up to three times the performance of competing host software RAID stacks or ROC-based adapter cards. As VRAs are software-based, they can easily incorporate other data protection services, such as the n-way mirroring schemes offered as part of the new RAIDCore products, to support simple, transparent and cost-effective system backup and recovery.
 
Dot Hill RAIDCore technology key features/functionality include:

• Single, unified O/S driver and single-pane management suite capable of managing RAID sets on both core logic SATA and SAS/SATA I/O controllers
• Native support for multiple motherboard chipset vendors, including AMD SB600, SB700 and SP5100 core logic SATA controllers
• Spanned virtual RAID arrays, allowing users to create virtual disks that span across discrete SAS/SATA I/O controllers and SATA-based core logic chipsets
• Broad Operating system support – Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, Windows 7-32 and 64 bit; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 -32 and 64 bit; SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and SLES 10–32 and 64 bit and Generic Linux SDK for custom integration
• Support for basic RAID 0, 1, 10 features or higher featured RAID 0,1,5,10,50 and n-way mirroring schemes 1n and10n via software license keys
• Hidden arrays and split mirror
• Web-enabled software licensing framework that enables easy after-market upgrades and eliminating the need for a hardware-based license key
• Support for mixed capacity drives allowing 100 percent of usage of all disk capacity available

To read more on AMD and RAIDCore