Storage devices bring RAID on a chip

The VSC7250 and VSC7251 are billed as the industry's most cost-effective, integrated and flexible RAID-on-chip devices for Serial Attached SCSI storage.

New from Vitesse Semiconductor Corp, the VSC7250 and VSC7251 are billed as the industry's most cost-effective, integrated and flexible RAID-on-chip (ROC) devices for Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) storage.

The ground breaking ROC controller ICs utilise RAID on Demand functionality to bring system vendor costs down, removing barriers for entry-level and volume server markets and accelerating the transition to next generation SAS storage.

With this announcement, Vitesse completes its end-to-end SAS storage offering and reinforces its technology leadership, utilising proven best in class SAS technology together with Adaptec's RAID expertise to create an affordable, enabling ROC solution.

"Vitesse is committed to driving technology advancement by providing cost-effective end-to-end SAS storage solutions to our OEM and ODM customers", said Tim Hornback, Vice President and General Manager, Storage Products Division, Vitesse.

"With the Vitesse SAS RAID controller ICs, Vitesse is now offering a complete SAS product portfolio that combines interoperability, flexibility and performance to reduce overall system cost and accelerate time to market while helping entry-level and volume server markets reap the benefits of SAS storage".

Increasing storage requirements are difficult to manage across today's complex networks.

While the continuous drive for lower costs, richer functions and faster speeds move solutions in one direction, emerging needs for data integrity, protection and security pull them in another.

The combination of SAS and RAID technologies meets these challenges by bringing lower costs and higher performance as well as greater scalability and reliability to higher density multi-drive systems.

While providing a migration path for SCSI, the SAS technology enables a cost-effective alternative to Fibre Channel, and supports SATA storage used by small and medium businesses for its low cost and high capacity features.

SAS RAID-on-chip takes improvements one step further, allowing system vendors to utilise an integrated solution to minimise risk while simplifying system design, reducing component count and lowering costs.

However, SAS RAID-on-chip solutions to date have been designed, and priced, for high-end markets or have fallen short on performance.

SAS integration also proves to be an issue with solutions offering less established SAS technologies.

Now, with the VSC7250 and VSC7251, Vitesse brings cost-effective, high performance, and reliable SAS ROC storage to entry-level and volume server markets with design attributes and functionality that underscore the company's technology leadership.

The Vitesse ROC controller ICs showcase a revolutionary RAID on demand feature for maximum RAID system design flexibility.

RAID on demand allows system vendors to use a single system design to meet various data protection requirements with a "pay-as-you-need" model that minimises development costs and speeds time to market.

Only when customers require advanced RAID feature sets will system vendors need to modify the hardware design.

Additionally, Vitesse's advanced hardware-based RAID functionality unburdens the CPU to ensure performance and reliability.

With the VSC7250 and VSC7251, system vendors gain a low risk SAS platform with best in class signal integrity and performance.

Shipping in millions of ports today within SAS expander products, the Vitesse SAS technology used in the SAS RAID-on-chip devices is well established, providing proven interoperability to minimise risk and protect data integrity.

The Vitesse ROC device was also developed through partnership with SAS/SCSI expert Adaptec and is thus supported by one of the industry's most mature RAID software architectures.

"Adaptec's enterprise-class RAID solutions have been qualified and proven by major OEMs, systems integrators and in thousands of customer installations around the world".

"The combination of Adaptec RAID software with Vitesse's VSC7250 and VSC7251 controller ICs raises the bar for cost effective, high performance SAS RAID-on-chip solutions", said Tim Connolly, Vice President of Marketing for the Data Protection Solutions Group at Adaptec.

"In particular, the RAID on demand feature provided by the VSC7250 and VSC7251 gives system vendors a competitive edge in utilising maximum flexibility for cost savings in system designs and improving time to market".

Ideally suited for RAID on motherboard (RoMB), SAS RAID HBAs, NAS and external storage systems, the Vitesse SAS ROC solution is available in two configurations: the VSC7250 and VSC7251.

The VSC7250 features eight PCI Express lanes and eight 3Gbit/s SAS ports.

The VSC7251 features four PCI Express lanes and four 3Gbit/s SAS ports.

The VSC7250 and VSC7251 are pin-to-pin compatible and at the same package size, which greatly simplifies designs.

Vitesse leverages advanced integration to help its system vendor customers reduce costs and system complexity.

The Vitesse SAS ROC controller ICs offer industry leading integration, incorporating several functions that previously existed only as discrete components.

The Vitesse VSC7250 and VSC7251 and associated customer evaluation boards are currently available to customers.

The parts are available in both standard and lead-free versions.

Pricing is available on request.

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