6 Gbps SAS 2.0 technology has been introduced to address data off-load bottlenecks in the direct-access storage environment. This new throughput doubles the transfer rate of the previous generation. SAS 2.0 is designed for backward compatibility with 3 Gbps SAS as well as with 3 Gbps SATA hard drives.

Self-encrypting drives are based on a new technology that helps prevent data from being accessed without authorization. These drives adhere to the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Enterprise Security Subsystem Class specification and are National Security Agency qualified to provide government-grade encryption. With self-encrypting drives (SEDs), if a drive is removed from its storage system or the server that it is housed in, the data on that drive is encrypted and useless to anyone who attempts to access it without the appropriate security authorization.

The ServeRAID M5015 includes the following items:

• One ServeRAID M5015 adapter card with full-height bracket
• One replaceable low-profile (2U) bracket
• One attached ServeRAID M5000 battery
• Documentation CD
• The IBM Important Notices Document

Specifications

The ServeRAID M5015 and ServeRAID M5014 adapter cards have the following specifications:

• Eight internal 6 Gbps SAS/SATA ports
• Two Mini-SAS internal connectors (SFF-8087)
• 6 Gbps throughput per port
• 800 MHz PowerPC processor with LSI SAS2108 6 Gbps RAID on Chip (ROC) controller
• x8 PCI Express 2.0 host interface
• Onboard data cache (DDR2 running at 800 MHz):
  • ServeRAID M5015: 512 MB
  • ServeRAID M5014: 256 MB
• Intelligent Li-Ion-based battery backup unit with up to 48 hours of data retention:
  • ServeRAID M5015: Standard
  • ServeRAID M5014: Optional
• Supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 10, and 50 (RAID 6 and 60 support with the optional M5000 Advanced Feature Key)
• Connects to up to 32 SAS or SATA drives
• SAS and SATA drives are supported, but the mixing of SAS and SATA in the same RAID array is not supported
• Supports up to 64 logical volumes
• Supports LUN sizes up to 64 TB
• Configurable stripe size up to 1 MB
• Compliant with Disk Data Format (DDF) configuration on disk (COD)
• S.M.A.R.T. support

Features

The ServeRAID M5015 and ServeRAID M5014 adapter cards have the following features:

• Auto-resume on array rebuild or array reconstruction after loss of system power

  Auto-resume uses non-volatile NVRAM to save rebuild progress during a host reboot or power failure to automatically resume from the last checkpoint. Auto-resume will ensure data integrity is maintained through the process. The card supports a number of features that are able to be implemented without rebooting the server. Applications such as email and web server benefit from avoiding downtime during transition.

• Online Capacity Expansion

  Online Capacity Expansion (OCE) allows the capacity of a virtual disk to be expanded by adding new physical disks or making use of unused space on existing disks, without requiring a reboot.

• Online RAID Level Migration

  Online RAID Level Migration (also known as logical drive migration) provides the ability to migrate a virtual disk from any RAID level to any other RAID level without requiring a reboot. System availability and application functionality remain unaffected.

• Fast initialization for quick array setup
• Consistency check for background data integrity

  Consistency Check verifies that all stripes in a virtual disk with a redundant RAID level are consistent. The consistency check will mirror data when an inconsistent stripe is detected for a RAID 1 and recreating the parity from the peer disks when in the case of a RAID 5 or RAID 6. Consistency checks can be scheduled to take place periodically.

• Extensive online configuration options: advanced monitoring and event notification

  Management tools provide convenience for configuration of logical volumes plus alerting when errors have occurred or are about to occur.

• Patrol Read for media scanning and repairing

  Patrol read is a background sentry service designed to proactively discover and correct media defects (bad sectors) that arise normally as a disk drive ages. The service issues a series of verify commands and if a bad block is discovered, the card's firmware will use RAID algorithms to recreate the missing data and remap the sector to a good sector. The task is interruptible based on controller activity and host operations. The firmware also provides an interface where the patrol read task can be initiated, set up for continuous operation, and terminated from a management application. Patrol read can be activated by manual command or automatically.

• Global and dedicated Hot Spare with Revertible Hot Spare support:

  A hot spare rebuilds data from all virtual disks within the disk group in which it is configured. ServeRAID provides the ability to define a physical disk as a hot spare to replace a failed drive. Hot spares may be configured as either global or dedicated. A global hot spare allows any physical drive to be designated as a hot spare. A dedicated hot spare will allow the user to assign a hot spare drive to a particular array of the same drive type.