SAS technology brings a wealth of options and flexibility with the use of SAS devices and SATA II devices within the same storage infrastructure. However, SAS devices and SATA devices bring individual characteristics that make each one a more suitable choice depending on your storage needs. MegaRAID® gives you the flexibility to combine these two similar technologies on the same controller and within the same enclosure.

The ServeRAID-MR10i controller is based on the MegaRAID first-to-market SAS IC technology and proven technology. As the second-generation PCI Express storage adapter, the ServeRAID-MR10i controller addresses the growing demand for increased data throughput and scalability requirements across midrange and enterprise-class server platforms. IBM® offers a family of SAS controllers to address the needs for both internal and external solutions.

The innovative intelligent Battery Backup Unit (iBBU) is an option for the ServeRAID-MR10i controller. The iBBU provides cached data protection, which allows system builders to protect cached data even during the most catastrophic system failures.

The ServeRAID-MR10i controller includes the following features:

• PCI Express x8 lane width
• PCI Express performance up to 2.5 Gbits/s per lane
• Support for 256-Mbyte DDR2 667 MHz on-board SDRAM
• Two internal connectors
• Support for RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60
• Advanced array configuration and management utilities
• Online RAID level migration
• Drive migration
• Drive roaming
• Media scan
• No reboot necessary after expansion
• More than 200 Qtags per array
• Hardware clustering support on the board
• User-specified rebuild rate
• 32-Kbyte nonvolatile random access memory (NVRAM) for storing RAID system configuration information; the MegaRAID SAS firmware is stored in flash ROM for easy upgrade.