LSI 3ware 9690SA-8I

High-Performance 3Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) RAID Controllers Its Time for SAS
3ware builds on an established 3ware SATA RAID leadership to introduce the 3ware 9690SA SAS controller, the new standard in Serial Attached SCSI RAID. 3ware pioneered the way for SATA and now capitalizes on time-proven serial storage expertise to take users from SCSI to SAS. The 3ware 9690SA delivers accelerated SAS performance and the flexibility of internal and external connectivity. As SAS makes inroads into the SCSI market, users will look to SAS to provide expanded connectivity and greater scalability and to the 3ware 9690SA for peace of mind

Connect, Expand, Protect with SAS
The 3ware 9690SA offers configuration flexibility with four PCI Express low profile controller choices:

– 8 internal ports
– 8 external ports
– 4 internal/4 external ports
– 4 internal ports

Compatibility with industry standard SAS expanders will maximize scalability. Each 9690SA SAS controller scales to support 128 SAS and/or SATA devices. Users will also enjoy a unified RAID management interface and software suite which assures a picture perfect configuration experience with every 3ware controller, irrespective of its storage interface

Enterprise-class SAS/SATA RAID Storage
Advanced 3ware RAID architecture, SAS and SATA II performance features, including 3Gb/s and NCQ, help rocket the 9690SA to RAID 5 and RAID 6 performance heights. An optional Battery Backup Unit with integrated write journaling and remote battery mounting capability provides added data protection in the event of a power outage. The 3ware 9690SA supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and Single Disk.

SAS: The Parallel SCSI Replacement
SAS is the preferred interface for the direct-attach server space, SCSI’s former mainstay. SAS is for mission critical applications that require higher levels of availability and native expansion. SAS is optimized for the random performance requirements of the data center. The 9690SA’s advanced RAID features, SAS connectivity, and powerful 3ware performance architecture make it the ideal SCSI controller replacement.

3ware 9690SA Features
- 8th-generation StorSwitch™ non-blocking switched architecture
- On-board I/O RISC processor and RAID offload provides true hardware RAID — SCSI device driver model to take advantage of SAS or inexpensive Serial ATA drives
- Bootable array support for greater fault tolerance of your OS
- Variable stripe size for performance tuning by application
- Support for greater than 2TB volumes
- 512MB DDR2 533 memory with ECC protection
- 128 max disk drives via SAS expanders
- Complete configuration management suite
— 3ware BIOS Manager (3BM) - easy to use BIOS configuration tool
— 3ware Disk Manager 2 - browser-based management tool
— Command Line Interface (CLI) - scriptable configuration tool

- SNMP support
- SMTP support for email/pager notification
- Staggered drive spin-up support
- Auto carving allows LUNs > 2TB to be divided into multiple units for legacy operating systems limited to 2TB max. per LUN
- Battery Backup Unit (BBU) with remote battery support
- Write journaling for improved performance and data protection against accidental drive removal
- Multiple SAS/SATA RAID sets
- Multiple logical unit sizes and RAID levels on one card
- Hot-swap and hot-spare support for data availability
- Dynamic sector repair for robust data protection
- S.M.A.R.T. disk drive monitoring for reliability
- Emergency Flash Recovery protects against failed firmware upgrade
- Drive activity LED support
- Array/Drive Status and drive identification LED support
- Enclosure management via I2C and SES 2.0
- Drive insertion and removal notification
- Online Capacity Expansion and RAID Level Migration
- RoHS 6 of 6 and WEEE compliant