HighPoint RocketRAID 2720 ($329)

HighPoint Technologies, Inc. announces shipment of the RocketRAID 2720. It delivers the next generation of SAS/SATA 6Gb/s performance and 8 channels of internal point-to-point direct connectivity. The newest member broadens the HighPoint RAID product portfolio which now includes SAS/SATA (3Gb/s) plus all generations of SATA (6Gb/s, 3Gb/s & 1.5Gb/s) storage interface.

 
RocketRAID 2720 Features
The RocketRAID 2720 is first member of the SAS/SATA 6Gb/s RAID host adapter family series. There two SFF-8087 connectors to support up to 8 internal SAS/SATA devices. A PCI-Express 2.0 x8 bus interface is backward compatible to PCI-Express 1.0. HighPoint hardware assisted RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, 50 and JBOD offers a balance of storage performance with protection.
 
Software support includes a wide range of the operating systems and a user friendly RAID management and monitoring tool for popular OSes such as Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.
 
Speed Boost from PCI-Express 2.0
A speed boost from PCI-Express 2.0 doubles the interconnect. This effectively increases the aggregate bandwidth of an 8-lane link to approximately 4GB/s of throughput. The higher bandwidth will achieve higher performance to support the highest performing SAS and SSD hard drives. The new PCI-Express 2.0 is commonly found in current server and high-end workstation configurations.
 
Smart Connectivity
With Smart Connectivity the RocketRAID 2720 has the flexibility to support either 15,000 RPM SAS and SSDs hard drives for performance and low cost SATA hard drives for capacity. The RocketRAID 2720 retains backward compatibility for SAS (3Gb/s) and for all generations of SATA (6Gb/s, 3Gb/s and 1.5Gb/s) hard drives. The ability to deploy either type of drives allows the computer system to be optimized for specific application and cost requirements. Disks with SAS interfaces and SSD’s are designed to meet the characteristics of highest performing environments while SATA interfaces are tailored for environments that require performance and capacity.
 
The RocketRAID 2720 is available exclusively through channel distribution partners (Bell Micro, D and H, MaLabs, and ASI). MSRP for the RocketRAID 2720 is $328.90.