The explosive growth of data in cloud and enterprise data centers is driving the need for a higher performance storage interface to speed the ability of critical applications to access data. Broadcom 12 Gb/s SAS solutions are designed to deliver the performance and data protection capabilities required for the most demanding next-generation server and storage platforms. Offering up to double the data transfer rate of 6 Gb/s SAS solutions, 12 Gb/s SAS allows the SAS infrastructure to deliver bandwidth that can fully utilize that of PCI Express 3.0 with a single controller card.
The Broadcom MegaRAID SAS 9361-16i, with sixteen internal ports in a low-profile form factor, delivers two 1.2 GHz PowerPC processor cores and a 72-bit DDR3 interface that drives 2 GB cache memory. Powered by the SAS3316 dual-core ROC, with 16 native SAS/SATA ports, the 9361-16i controller can take full advantage of the latest PCI Express 3.0 interface to provide higher performance and increased throughput. The 12 Gb/s MegaRAID SAS 9361-16i is designed for configuring high-density storage servers with up to 16 drives via direct connection inside the box or up to 240 drives by leveraging SAS expander technology.
Standard support for the most popular RAID levels, including RAID 5 and RAID 6, further strengthens the data protection capabilities of the MegaRAID SAS 9361-16i. A new enterprise feature employed by the 12 Gb/s MegaRAID SAS controllers is advanced drive diagnostic technology. In the event of a physical drive failure, the drive is placed in shield state and the MegaRAID controller starts drive diagnostics to determine if the drive is indeed failed or can be restored. This saves customers time, money, and lost compute time associated with transient drive failures and unnecessary drive returns.