Introduction

The Adaptec Series 7 RAID adapter family features PMC's 24 port PM8015 RAID-on-Chip (ROC), which combines a x8 PCIe Gen3 interface with 6Gb/s SAS ports to enable a new generation of high- performance RAID adapters that are unmatched by any other ROC in the industry. Adaptec Series 7 RAID adapters are available with 8, 16, or 24 native SAS/SATA ports.

While the PCIe Gen3 interface doubles bandwidth to the host compared to PCIe Gen2, it requires at least 16 6Gb/s SAS/SATA ports to double the bandwidth to the storage devices. Competing 6Gb/s solutions have only 8 ports, and cannot leverage that advantage.

New Levels of Performance
Series 7 adapters perform at up to 6.6 GB/s on sequential reads and up to 2.6 GB/s on sequential writes on parity RAID 5, more than doubling the performance of competing host-based RAID adapters. With 16 direct-connected solid-state drives (SSDs), Series 7 adapters can deliver up to 450,000 IOPS - nearly 10x the performance of previous-generation RAID adapters.

Advanced Data Protection
Adaptec RAID Code (ARC) delivers maximum reliability with RAID levels 0, 1, 1E, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60 (71605E supports 0, 1, 1E, and 10, only) . ARC also offers RAID Level Migration (the ability to easily migrate RAID levels), Online Capacity Expansion (expand capacity without powering down the server), and Copyback Hot Spare (when a failed drive has been replaced, data is automatically copied from the hot spare back to the restored drive). New to Series 7 is its auto configuration capability. Users can operate in HBA mode (expose drives to the host directly) or Simple Volume mode (use fast DRAM cache to reduce latency and improve performance), without the need to use setup tools. In RAID mode, they can mix and match all devices and handle them at the same time.

Connectivity
Series 7 adapters support all types of devices including drives, tapes, autoloaders, external RAID systems. They support migration of disk drives from standard Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) as well as onboard SATA or SAS interfaces from the motherboard.

Introducing mini SAS HD Connectors
These connectors allow for greater flexibility in configuration options by supporting up to 16 native SAS/SATA ports in a Low-Profile MD2 form factor and up to 24 SAS/SATA ports in a full-height half-length form factor. The new connectors can be combined with a wide range of Adaptec SAS HD cables, including straight connectors or Adaptec's first to market right angle connectors.

Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection (ZMCP)
Series 7 adapters can be combined with AFM-700, our third-generation flash-based cache protection module(sold separately) to enable instant battery-free protection of the data within the cache.*

Adaptec maxView Storage Manager
Adaptec maxView Storage Manager provides the powerful features of Adaptec Storage ManagerT in an HTML5 web interface that can be viewed in standard desktop or mobile browsers without the need for separate software installation.