RAID Technology
What is RAID?
RAID, or Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, is a data storage structure enabling a data center to combine two or more physical storage devices, such as HDDs, SSDs, or both, into a logical unit that the attached system views as a single drive.
RAID can either be hardware-based or software-based, each approach having its own pros and cons.
Hardware RAID resides on a PCI-X or PCIe controller card, or on a motherboard-integrated RAID-on-Chip (ROC). With the RAID tasks offloaded from the host system, this approach offers several benefits such as better performance than software RAID. Controller cards are easily swappable for replacement or upgrades. Hardware-based RAID also permits data backup to prevent loss in case of a power failure.
In contrast, software RAID runs entirely on the host system CPU. While lower cost due to lack of RAID-dedicated hardware, this implementation comes at the cost of performance, since the CPU also powers the operating system and other applications. There is also no data backup with the software RAID approach.
Microsemi Hardware RAID Technology
Microsemi’s smart storage technology delivers two levels of hardware RAID options:
- SmartRAID (advanced hardware RAID) with maximum featured RAID data protection and caching for HDD performance
- SmartHBA (basic RAID) with standard RAID data protection and uncompromised HBA performance
Smart Storage Platform Advantages
- Reliability: >30 million deployments
- Performance: >70% boost in IOPs
- Power: >40% power savings
- Security: Industry’s only data-at-rest controller-based encryption
Unified Drivers, Firmware & Management Tools
A unified stack and comprehensive software suite underpin Microsemi’s smart storage portfolio, improving overall end customer experience vis-à-vis reliability, consistency of performance, and reduced qualification time.
Further exclusive to Microsemi is its standards-based PQI host OS driver, which is a unique architecture built to benefit both hardware RAID and Software Defined Storage (SDS) use cases. PQI drivers are highly optimized for memory-based storage devices (SSDs) and reduce host CPU load while minimizing latencies.
Microsemi’s hardware RAID technology is well-suited for multiple applications such as:
- SMB HDD or hybrid applications requiring RAID 0,1,10,5
- High performance enterprise servers with maximum data availability