LSI Logic SAS3442X

SAS player LSI Logic sent us its SAS3442X PCI-X host adapter, which is the direct competitor to Adaptec's SAS 48300. It comes with eight SAS ports that are distributed to two quad link ports, using LSI's SAS1068 controller. One of these is available for internal use, the other one allows for running external DAS (Direct Attached Storage) devices. The board connects to your server system via PCI-X 133.

As usual, 300 MB/s transfers are supported both for SATA and SAS drives. There are 16 LEDs on the controller board. Eight of them are basic activity LEDs, while the other eight are fault LEDs that are used to display problems.

LSI's SAS3442X is a low profile PCI-X card and, thus, will fit into any 2U rack mount server.

The driver support includes native Linux drivers, Netware 5.1 and 6, Windows 2000 and Server 2003 (x64), Windows XP (x64) and Solaris up to 2.10. Different than Adaptec, LSI does not support any kind of RAID mode with this card.