External RAID Storage

Controller ACS-61020CB

The card utilizes an Intel 64-bit Xscale IOP333 processor running at 500 MHz, providing decent performance for XOR acceleration in RAID 5 or RAID 6. The PCB was designed to offer two eSATA ports, but only one connector was available on our sample. The optional battery backup unit (BBU), which buffers data within the 256-MB DDR2-400 ECC cache memory in case of a power outage, wasn’t included with the kit.

RAID levels 0, 1, 0+1, 5, 6 and JBOD are supported, and the card features all the RAID options administrators appreciate: RAID expansion and migration is supported. The device supports the creation of storage snapshots, instant RAID initialization, 2+ TB volumes, multiple RAID arrays, automatic rebuild and disk scrubbing with bad block recovery. Unfortunately, the RAID controller card has a height of 111 mm and so doesn’t fit into low-profile servers.

RAIDGuard X 1.7 Software

Accusys bundles its RAIDGuard software, which is based on Java, and so compatible with all major operating systems. Once installed, you’ll have to select a RAID level, stripe size and sector size. Hard drives are selected by clicking on the drive icons; the software will display the drive model and firmware version (revision). After selecting on-the-fly or standard initialization, the array will be created immediately.