PCIe SAS RAID card comparison

Subscribe to this information

POWER7 information

PCIe SAS RAID card comparison

This table compares the main features of PCI Express™ (PCIe) SAS RAID cards.

Table 1. PCIe SAS RAID controller cards

CCIN (custom card identificat-ion number)	574E	57B3	57B7	57B9	57BA	57C7	57CD	57CF
Description	PCIe x8 Ext Dual-x4 3 Gb SAS RAID Adapter	PCIe x8 Ext Dual-x4 3 Gb SAS Adapter	PCIe x1 Auxiliary Cache Adapter	PCIe x8 Ext Dual-x4 3 Gb SAS Adapter and Cable Card	PCIe x8 Ext Dual-x4 3 Gb SAS Adapter and Cable Card	PCI Express x8 Planar 3 Gb SAS Adapter (Disk/Media Backplane)	PCIe SAS RAID and SSD Adapter 3 Gb x8	PCI Express x8 Planar 3 Gb SAS RAID Adapter (with 175 MB Cache RAID - Dual IOA Enablement Card)
Form factor	PCIe x8	PCIe x8	Planar Auxiliary Cache	Combination PCIe x8 and Cable Card	Combination PCIe x8 and Cable Card	Planar	Double Wide PCIe x8 with 1 to 4 integrated SSDs	Planar and Enablement Card
Adapter failing function code LED value	2518	2516	2504	2D0B	2D0B	2D14	2D40	2D15
Physical links	8 (two mini SAS 4x connectors)	8 (two mini SAS 4x connectors)	2	4 (bottom mini-SAS 4x connector required to connect by an external AI cable to the top mini-SAS 4x Cable Card connector)	8 (two mini SAS 4x connectors, one required to connect by an external AI cable to the top mini-SAS 4x Cable Card connector)	8	4 (one direct SAS physical link to each integrated SSD)	8
RAID levels supported	RAID 0, 5, 6, 10	RAID 0, 51, 61, 10		RAID 0, 51, 61, 10	RAID 0, 51, 61, 10	RAID 0, 51, 61, 10	RAID 02, 5, 10 (also see3)	RAID 0, 5, 6, 10
Write cache size4	380 MB		175 MB					175 MB
Read cache size
Cache battery pack technology	LiIon		LiIon					LiIon
Cache battery pack FFC	2D0E		2D05					2D19
Cache battery concurrent maintenance	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	Yes
Cache data present LED	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	Yes
Removable cache card	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Auxiliary write cache (AWC) support	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
High availability (HA) two system RAID	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
HA two system JBOD	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
HA single system RAID	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
Requires HA RAID configuration	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
1 The write performance of RAID 5 and RAID 6 might be poor on adapters that do not provide write cache. Consider using an adapter that provides write cache when using RAID 5 or RAID 6 or utilize solid-state drives (SSDs) where supported to improve write performance. 2 RAID 0 requires the use of AIX logical value manager (LVM) mirroring. 3 The integrated SSDs are allowed to run in JBOD mode. 4 Nonvolatile write cache is supported for RAID disk arrays only.

Figure 1. CCIN 574E PCIe x8 Ext Dual-x4 3 Gb SAS RAID adapter (disk/media backplane)

Figure 2. CCIN 57B3 PCIe x8 Ext Dual-x4 3 Gb SAS adapter

Figure 3. CCIN 57B7 Planar auxiliary cache

Figure 4. CCIN 57B9 PCIe x8 Ext Dual-x4 3 Gb SAS adapter and cable card

Figure 5. CCIN 57BA PCIe x8 Ext Dual-x4 3 Gb SAS adapter and cable card

Figure 6. CCIN 57C7 PCI Express x8 Planar 3 Gb SAS adapter (with 175 MB Cache RAID - Dual IOA Enablement card)

Figure 7. CCIN 57CD PCIe SAS RAID and 3 Gb x8 SSD adapter

Figure 8. CCIN 57CF PCI Express x8 Planar 3 Gb SAS RAID adapter

Parent topic: Feature comparison of SAS RAID cards

Related information

SAS subsystem for the 8202-E4B or 8205-E6B

SAS subsystem for the 8231-E2B

Removing a disk drive or solid-state drive

---

Send feedback | Rate this page

 Last updated: Fri, October 22, 2010