One of the hottest segments in storage this year will be SAS (serial attached SCSI), the more flexible, more scalable successor to parallel SCSI that brings new models of disk drives and controllers to the market. Adadptec announced this week a new family of RAID controllers offering several models with 4, 8, 12, and 16 ports that can host dedicated or mixed arrays of SAS and SATA drives. The new controllers, wh One of the hottest segments in storage this year will be SAS (serial attached SCSI), the more flexible, more scalable successor to parallel SCSI that brings new models of disk drives and controllers to the market. The new controllers, which Adaptec dubs the 3405, 3805, 31205, and 31605 according to the number of ports, have some points in common. All have the PCIe (PCI Express) interface and a low profile that should fit easily in most boxes. The 3805 is also available with eight external ports and dual path failover. Adaptec is understandably proud of the performance achieved by the new controllers, and has published the results of some internal benchmarks where the 16 port models outperform competing controllers from LSI and HP using SAS drives, and yield only to the speedy AMCC 3Ware controllers when mounting SATA drives. To the best of my knowledge, those results have not been independently verified, so taking them with the usual grain of salt is highly recommended. I took an early peek at the 4-port model, probably the most likely choice for an end user planning a server update. I mounted the 3405 in an HP Proliant ML370 running Windows Server 2003 with SP1 (the controller comes with driver for a variety of OSes, including Linux, Novell Netware, and Sun Solaris). A comprehensive spec sheet for these controllers is available here (it’s a PDF file). Using an octopus cable , I connected my Seagate Cheetah 15K SAS drives to the controller with four connectors on the drives side and a single compact port to fit the controller. Having only four drives, I chose to implement RAID 5 over three drives and leaving one hot spare. The 3×05 controllers can also run RAID 6, which uses dual parity and can survive double drive failures.Defining the LUN was a snap using the Java-based Storage Manager. After a quick format in Windows Disk Management, I filled about 30 percent of the 136GB available on the new volume with test files. To create some traffic on new controller, I started Iometer and targeted the new volume. To simulate a drive failure and force the controller to use the spare drive, I forcibly powered off one of the three active drives. The controller immediately began beeping to signal the error condition. Back at Storage Manager, I silenced the alarm and watched while the controller automatically began rebuilding the LUN over the spare drive. Iometer was still running, but at a much slower pace.It took about 40 minutes to completely restore the LUN — not a bad time considering the amount of data and the relentless pounding with Iometer during the recovery. My thoughts? If you’re planning a server update, do not overlook the new unified SAS/SATA controllers from Adaptec. Adaptec SAS/SATA Controllers Availability: March 30th Cost: $390 Verdict: The new line of controllers from Adaptec has already some powerful challengers and more are coming to the market. Among its strong points, Adaptec can count on a well rounded management application that controls both internal and external devices with a single GUI. Add to that support for just about any OS I can think of, 128MB of cache that grows up to 256MB (with the option of battery back-up) on larger models, and the ability to choose the model with the number of ports that best fits the application.If the street price of the new controllers will settle at a competitive figure, Adaptec might be able to add also an enviable price/feature ratio to that bundle. Technology Industry