Adaptec SAS RAID 4800

SAS RAID4800SAS is Adaptec's answer to more sophisticated SAS storage requirements and thus can be used to power application servers, streaming servers, security applications and so on. Again this is an eight-port controller card, with one external quad link SAS connector and two internal quad link SAS ports. However, if the external port is used, only one of the internal link connectors may be used.

This card also is a PCI-X 133 model, which offers sufficient bandwidth to power even the most demanding RAID setups.

In regard to RAID, the SAS RAID 4800 easily out performs its little brother; RAID levels 0, 1, 10, 5, 50 are supported by default, given you're running an adequate amount of drives. Unlike the 48300, Adaptec bundles two SAS fanout cables, so you can attach eight drives inside your server system right from the start. In contrast to the 48300, this card requires a full height PCI-X slot

If you decide to upgrade to Adaptec's Advanced Data Protection Suite, you will receive the double redundancy RAID modes 6, 60 as well as enterprise class features such as the option for a striped mirror drive (RAID 1E), hot spacing (RAID 5EE) and copyback hot spares. The Adaptec Storage Manager is the browser enabling interface that is used to administer all Adaptec storage adapters.

Adaptec offers drivers for Windows Server 2003 (and x64), Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP (x64), Novell Netware, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4, SuSe Linux Enterprise Server 8 and 9 and FreeBSD.