Supermicro 4U Storage Server Features 72 Hot-Swap SAS2 Drives

Storage specialist Super Micro Computers announced the latest addition to its Double-Sided Storage family, the SC417, which supports up to 72 hot-swap 2.5-inch SAS2 hard drives in a single 4U chassis, and up to 88 in upcoming JBOD configuration. While the previous maximum was 48 drives in the front, Supermicro has added 24 more hot-swap drives in the rear of the SC417 to deliver nearly double the storage capacity.

With more than 14 chassis models currently available with 6G-bps SAS2 expanders, Supermicro's storage solutions can cascade up to 240 hard drives. The company said its SC417 series storage solutions, configured with 2.5-inch Toshiba enterprise SAS2 drives, not only double the drive density, but also reduce the power consumption per drive by over 65 percent.

"Our newest Double-Sided Storage server SC417 currently supports up to 43TB of hot-swap SAS2 storage capacity in 4U," said Charles Liang, CEO and president of Supermicro. "With the demonstrated strong market demand for high storage capacity, we can closely support our valued channel partners with these leading-edge storage solutions."

The company's suite of 2U, 3U, 4U and Double-Sided Storage SAS2 expander chassis incorporate additional features such as a fully redundant cooling design that protects system operation and performance even if a fan fails. Other features include SES-2 enclosure management and iPass cables that minimize the number of internal cables, designed to improve system airflow, cooling, performance and reliability. Additionally, the chassis support up to seven full-height, full-length expansion cards.

"The relentless data growth generated by digital media, such as mobile apps and online video, requires storage solutions that both boost performance and expand storage capacity beyond the server," said Robin Wagner, senior director of product marketing for LSI's storage components division. "The new Supermicro SC417 series storage chassis, featuring LSI 6G-bps SAS silicon and MegaRAID technology, enable system builders to deliver end-to-end 6G-bps SAS solutions offering superior levels of performance, scalability and reliability for servers, workstations and blade solutions."

The storage solutions incorporate LSI 6G-bps SAS silicon and MegaRAID technology, including LSI 6G-bps SAS expander and RAID-on-Chip (ROC) ICs. The E16 version single Edge-expander chassis can cascade up to 240 physical devices, while the E26 models with dual edge expanders support redundant data path failover protection for mission-critical applications. These versatile SAS2 chassis all support a range of UP and DP server boards up to 13.68 by 13 inches, including those optimized for eight-core Xeon 5600 or 12-core Opteron processors and those with 18 memory slots for up to 288GB of memory.

"The 6G-bps SAS-enabled Supermicro SC417 series storage chassis deliver numerous benefits that both large enterprise and SMB customers desire," said Joel Hagberg, vice president of enterprise marketing at Toshiba's storage device division. "By supporting up to 72 2.5-inch 6G-bps SAS enterprise drives, these solutions provide unprecedented levels of performance-per-watt, scalability, reliability and data integrity and are ideal for today's most demanding enterprise applications. With hot-swap capability, users can service their data systems without interruption, providing outstanding data center uptime."