INDUSTRY

HP Smart Array P800 Sets TPC-H 100 GB Performance Benchmark as Storage Market Continues the Transition to SAS: Enabled by SAS storage components from LSI Logic Corporation and PMC-Sierra, HP's latest SAS Smart Array, the SA-P800, delivers maximum performance for the record-breaking TPC-H 100 GB performance benchmarks. Combining the power of the controller with HP ProLiant servers, the SA-P800 delivers a SAS RAID 6 solution for internal direct attached storage and external storage applications. HP ProLiant 500 series servers have set record TPC-H 100 GB performance benchmarks, including the 17,120 QphH effort put forth by the ProLiant DL580 system and the 19,323 QphH results recorded by the DL585 G2 system. The HP SA- P800 features a 2.5 Gb/s PCI Express host interface, delivering maximum performance with the HP ProLiant DL300 and DL500 server series. HP is shipping a family of SAS servers to SMB and enterprise customers. Supporting up to 108 drives, the HP SA-P800 delivers RAID 6 with Advanced Data Guarding (ADG) protection, which allows users to recover data in the event of two drive failures. This is even more critical in SAS environments where systems will often use lower MTBF (mean time before failure) SATA spindles in combination with enterprise SAS hard disk drives. "End users look for solutions that deliver high-performance and uncompromised data protection, which is precisely what the HP SA-P800 controller with the LSISAS1078 ROC delivers," said Bill Wuertz, vice-president and general manager, Storage Components Group, LSI Logic. "With PCI-Express performance and RAID 6 support, integration of the LSI SAS ROC with HP's RAID stack is a natural fit." The LSISAS1078 is an eight-port, 3.0 Gb/s SAS/SATA (Serial ATA) ROC device that serves as a powerful I/O storage engine capable of performing all data protection, data checking, and restoration tasks. The LSISAS1078 ROC provides an eight-lane, 2.5 Gb/s PCI Express host interface, and a full-featured, cost- effective hardware-based RAID implementation. "PMC-Sierra's SXP 24x3G leverages our proven multi-gigabit serial expertise to deliver a product optimized for the SAS market with excellent signal integrity, low power and design flexibility," said Peter Wong, director of marketing for PMC-Sierra's Enterprise Storage Division. "PMC-Sierra is working closely with the storage industry leaders to enable the wide-spread deployment of SAS-based enterprise storage systems." PMC Sierra's PM8388 SXP 24-port SAS expander enables the SA-P800 to support an increased number of drives. Supporting 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s SAS and SATA operations, the PM8388 provides a robust and reliable expander solution which is easily integrated with the HP SA-P800 controller enabling maximum system performance and increased scalability of storage capacity. "HP's SAS solutions provide customers the utmost in performance, availability and flexibility," said Steve Cumings, director of marketing, Storage, Networks and Infrastructure, HP. "With the assistance of the LSI ROC technology and PMC-Sierra's expanders, we're delivering the SA-P800, our most feature-rich SAS RAID controller to date." SAS technology enables SCSI interface solutions beyond Ultra320 to the next-generation Direct Attached Storage (DAS) enterprise server, storage systems, and high-performance workstation markets while retaining device-level backward compatibility. The SAS standard defines a device-level enterprise storage interface incorporating SCSI command sets, serial point-to-point interconnections, dual porting, increased addressability and the ability to scale to small form factors. Small form factor drives, with their 70 percent reduction in volume and lower power consumption, drive significant customer value in dense compute and storage environments. Because the SAS physical layer is compatible with SATA, users will have the choice of populating their systems with SAS or SATA hard disk drives, or a combination of both.