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LSI Logic MegaRAID SAS 8888ELP

From STORAGE Magazine Vol 7, Issue 7 - October 2007

LSI Logic has been a busy company this past year as along with a number of key acquisitions it's been steadily building up its RAID controller product lines and now offers one of the most comprehensive ranges currently on the market. LSI Logic has consistently delivered new technology well ahead of its main rivals and it now offers three ranges of RAID adapters targeting entry-level applications, value and features respectively. The latest MegaRAID SAS 8888ELP is the flagship of the features range and it's easy to see why as it is packed with them, making it a top choice for businesses looking for a solid combination of data protection and performance.

Despite the number of features on offer the 8888ELP is a low-profile, half-length PCI-Express card. This allows it to slot into a wide range of pedestal and rack server systems which will undoubtedly increase its appeal to system integrators. LSI has achieved this feat as all its latest controller cards employ its new SAS IC (integrated circuit) technology. LSI has replaced the Intel IOP processors on the older MegaRAID adapters with its own SAS1078 storage controller chip which incorporates a 500MHz PowerPC processor. Furthermore, the generous 256MB of DDRII cache memory is now implemented on a mini-DIMM socket, can be upgraded to 512MB and, at 667MHz, is currently the fastest on the market. Battery backup options have also been extended as you can now choose between a standard pack or an intelligent module which allows the cache to be removed and transported to a new system without losing its data.

RAID options can't be beaten as, along with the usual suspects, the 8888ELP supports RAID-6 and -60 out of the box. RAID-6 requires a minimum of four drives to function as it uses the capacity of two for redundancy but it can survive the loss of two drives. The 8888ELP offers a rich menu of connectivity options as the card sports a pair of SAS SFF8087 internal four-port connectors and another pair of SAS SFF8088 external ports. A maximum of two active connectors are supported so you can use both external or internal ports or one of each and either configuration supports 240 hard disks.

To test performance we used a dual 3GHz Xeon 5160 Supermicro rack server equipped with 4GB of memory and running Windows Server 2003. We loaded the open-source Iometer utility and started with it configured with one disk worker, 64KB transfer requests and 100 per cent sequential read operations. With a single Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 SAS drive attached Iometer reported a raw read rate of 78MB/sec. We then added a second, third and fourth drive and assigned a new worker to each one. Read rates increased impressively with Iometer returning 180MB/sec, 265MB/sec and 354MB/sec respectively.

LSI provides plenty of configuration utilities and you can start with the card's WebBIOS utility, which provides a smart graphical interface at boot-up from where you can check drives and existing arrays, create new arrays and designate drives as hot-spares. LSI's MegaRAID Storage Manager (MSM) supports both Windows and Linux and provides a well designed interface offering easy access to all features. It's simple enough to create new arrays as a wizard takes you through a three-step process where you choose the drives to be included, select an array type and leave the card to get on with building it.

Businesses looking for the best that SAS has to offer need look no further than the MegaRAID 8888ELP. It's small form factor makes it highly versatile and it combines this with top performance, extreme ease of use and an excellent range of data protection features. ST

Product: MegaRAID SAS 8888ELP
Supplier: LSI Logic
Tel: 01344 865900
Web site: www.lsi.com
Price: £501 exc VAT