Adaptec Enters HBA Market with First Encrypted Solutions for Secure Data Center Storage

The Adaptec Series 7H and 6H families of SAS/SATA HBAs provide customers with high-performance connectivity for hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), removable media and tape drives. The product family is ideally suited for high performance data center applications.

“This new Adaptec HBA family, with its embedded encryption technology, higher port-count and higher performance, provides our customers with a distinct competitive advantage over any other products currently in the market,” said Jared Peters, vice president of Server Storage Solutions at PMC. “Customers continually ask for flexible solutions to better manage the continued expansion of their own data storage demands, and these products provide a wide range of cost-efficient solutions to meet their growing storage and security requirements.”

Leading I/O Performance with Series 7H HBAs

Adaptec Series 7H HBAs, featuring PMC’s 16-port PM8018 6Gb/s I/O controller silicon and an x8 PCIe Gen3 interface, are the industry’s first to achieve more than 1 million IOPS with 512 byte blocks, and can also execute more than 800,000 IOPS with 4K blocks. Built-in support for MSI-X support allows the adapters to leverage multi-core host CPUs in order to boost application performance. This increased performance allows customers to harness the full potential of solid-state drives, enabling a host of low-latency applications.

The PCIe Gen3 interface also doubles bandwidth to the host compared to the previous generation. With 16 SAS/SATA ports, these HBA products are the first to take full advantage of the maximum bandwidth. The Adaptec Series 7H HBAs are also the first in the industry to use mini SAS HD connectors, offering up to 16 native SAS/SATA ports in a low-profile MD2 form factor that is ideal for high-density servers. The new connectors can be combined with a wide range of Adaptec
high-density SAS cables.

Improved Data Security with Adaptec maxCrypto Encryption Technology

Data centers are experiencing explosive growth in data and storage capacity, and Adaptec Series 7He HBAs feature Adaptec maxCrypto security technology, a 256 bit AES, in-line encryption engine enabled with a unique hardware encryption key. This key allows customers to protect data on their storage media and if required dispose of their disk or tape drives without the risk of exposing confidential customer data.

Connectivity Options with Series 6H HBAs

Adaptec Series 6H HBAs utilize PMC’s 8-port PM8001 6Gb/s I/O controller silicon and x4 PCIe Gen2 interface to provide cost-efficient HBA solutions rated at more than 250,000 IOPS with 512 byte blocks and more than 200,000 IOPS with 4K blocks. Featuring a low-profile MD2 form factor, Series 6H HBAs fit into x4/x8/x16 PCIe slots and are available in 4- and 8-port (internal) options using standard mini SAS connectors.

Both the Adaptec 6H and 7H product lines share common drivers and management tools, including drivers for Windows, VMWare, and open-source Linux.

“Security, performance, and dense I/O connectivity now rank among the ‘must-haves,’ and with datacenter space at a premium, simply continuing to build up and out to scale is no longer a sustainable solution,” said Laura Dubois, Program Vice President of IDC Storage Systems Software and Solutions. “Datacenter operators seek out solutions such as these that offer optimal capacity and performance, now fundamental requirements with the continued explosion of big data within these critical environments.”

Availability

The complete family of Adaptec Series 7 and Adaptec Series 6 HBAs will be available through Adaptec’s worldwide Distributors and storage channel partners in Q2 2013.