Digiliant Uses LSI RAID Controllers and 4TB HDDs

Based in Okemos, MI, Digiliant LLC,
provider of customized NAS/SAN iSCSI for electronic storage, announced its
inclusion of LSI RAID controllers and 4TB HDD in the building of its systems.

As storage requirements are pushed to their
limits we are seeing the need for everything from increased power to more
efficient hardware. There is not only a need to store data, but organize and
prioritize it. LSI RAID controllers along with Adaptec line, according to
Digiliant, goes above and beyond in meeting these consumer needs.

Designed to deliver IOPS and
bandwidth performance for computing, medical imaging, digital content
development, and other demanding applications, these controller cards offer
6Gb/s or legacy 3Gb/s transfer rates; PCIe 2.0 host connectivity; support for
SATA, SAS or SSD; and LSI software options for select MegaRAID
controllers.

Providing a designed balance
between data protection features, performance, and cost, these controller cards
are designed to deliver data applications for SMBs, as well as a wide variety
of cloud, security, and core business applications

Second generation LSI 6Gb/s SATA+SAS with performance

• Designed for internal storage environments
  using up to 128 SAS, SATA and SSDs
• Designed for IOPS performance and
  software options help users realize benefits of SSD deployments
• CacheVault technology option for greener,
  lower total cost cache protection
• Support for CacheCade Pro 2.0 read/write
  caching software to help accelerate I/O performance of existing HDD arrays
  using SSDs as cache.
• Interoperability with the latest
  server platforms based on the PCIe 3.0 specification
• Helps to meet high I/O transaction demands
  of database and datacenter applications
• Provides the sustained data transfer rates
  and high sequential bandwidth to meet processing requirements of digital media,
  video and imaging environments

The fastest way for a RAID controller to
fulfill a read or write request is to serve data out of its cache. Savvy
network administrators know that enabling the RAID controller cache offers performance
benefits, such as reduced latency in I/O requests, bandwidth and queue depths
that surpass software application limits, and on-the-fly parity calculations on
sequential writes.

LSI’s CacheVault adapter providing access
to write-back cache is one of the many benefits of a hardware RAID controller
card. Write-back cache improves application performance by storing write data
to cache memory during periods of heavy use. When there is a break in user
requests the data is then written from the cache memory to the array.

During normal write-back operation, data is written to cache DRAM, the IO is
acknowledged as ‘complete’ to the application that issued the write, and later
the write is flushed to disk. If power is lost while write-back cache is
enabled, the writes in DRAM may be lost. And since the controller has already
acknowledged the IOs as complete, the application is unaware of the data loss.

To minimize this risk, enterprise RAID controllers equipped with cache
typically offer a battery backup (BBU) option. The purpose of the battery is
to provide power to the controller in the event that the power from the server
is interrupted. This protects the data in the cache until power to the server
can be restored and cache data written to disk.

While generally effective, BBUs may require maintenance, special handling and
protect cache data for a limited time. LSI’s CacheVault technology, providing
flash-based cache protection for MegaRAID 6Gb/s SATA+SAS RAID controllers,
offers a greener, lower total cost cache protection solution without the
drawbacks of a BBU.

Offering Windows-Linux based NAS/SAN iSCSI systems technology is, according to
Digiliant senior account manager, Tom Tarasiewicz, in keeping with the
company’s overall commitment to staying on the cutting edge with current
products and giving their customers the effective
solutions for their storage needs; demands that are increasing for most
businesses by up to 40% per year.

"We
are a company that is very much customer focused," says Tarasiewicz.
"Our customers come to us with
individual storage needs and our goal is always to provide them with specific,
customized solutions to meet those needs. The LSI and Adaptec RAID Controllers
provides our clients with the power and versatility they demand."