Supermicro Ships 6Gb/s SAS 2.0 Solutions with Seagate Drives

Server system solutions specialist Super Micro Computer, Inc. announced the launch of Server Building Block Solutions that deliver 6Gb/s SAS 2.0 performance. The launch includes eight systems plus five serverboard platforms, two SuperBlade servers and three Universal I/O (UIO) cards. These new product lines incorporate the company’s latest LSI 6Gb/s SAS controller IC, 6Gb/s SAS RAID-on-Chip and MegaRAID software stack. The appliances also offer Seagate's 6Gb/s SAS enterprise Savvio (2.5-inch) and Cheetah (3.5-inch) drive families.

The company’s initial launch of eight new Intel Xeon 5500 (Nehalem) processor-based systems with onboard 6Gb/s SAS technology includes 1U, 2U, 3U and 4U rackmount or tower servers and workstations with both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch hard drive support. Based on the X8DT6-F, X8DA6, X8DTW-6+F, X8DTH-6F and X8DTL-6F serverboards, Supermicro SAS 2.0 systems feature enhanced thermal and power designs to deliver improved performance-per-watt and performance-per-dollar. Supermicro also introduced a line of blade servers based on 6Gb/s SAS technology, the SBI-7126T-S6 and SBI-7426T-S3, for 10-blade and 14-blade enclosures, respectively.

"Supermicro's high-performance 6Gb/s SAS2 solutions raise the bar in enterprise storage by doubling the bandwidth and offering superior scalability, reliability and enhanced features," said Supermicro president and CEO Charles Liang. "Our innovative Server Building Block Solutions, incorporating proven LSI SAS and RAID technology, enable customers to improve their storage performance and power efficiency, without having to pay a price premium."

Liang said 6Gb/s SAS offers a number of significant improvements over 3Gb/s SAS and SATA such as 6Gb/s data transfer rates and standardized zoning as well as support for cable lengths of up to 10 meters to ensure storage integrity in large cluster and datacenter deployments. The 6Gb/s SAS controllers also interact with expanders and other infrastructure devices to improve system diagnostics, status, management, configuration and initialization.

The Universal I/O (UIO) add-on controller cards support eight internal 6Gb/s SAS ports and RAID functionalities. With a PCI Express 2.0 host interface and intelligent architecture, these controllers double the data transfer rates of their 3Gb/s predecessors and are designed to easily integrate with existing 3Gb/s SATA and SAS infrastructures for improved performance and scalability. The system design incorporates features as patented cooling, custom cabling for superior signal integrity, high efficiency power supplies, Integrated IPMI 2.0, Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) over LAN and virtual media support, which Supermicro said makes them an ideal choice for manageable, mission critical applications while keeping IT green.

"As the market transitions to 6Gb/s SAS, LSI is the vendor of choice among leading OEMs such as Supermicro to enable their next-generation server solutions," said LSI’s senior vice president and general manager of the storage components division, Bill Wuertz. "The LSI 6Gb/s SAS controller and RAID-on-Chip ICs build upon our industry-leading 3Gb/s SAS technology, delivering superior levels of performance, reliability and scalability for servers, workstations and blade solutions."