Lenovo ThinkSystem RAID 5350-8i PCIe12Gb Adapter

Introduction

The ThinkSystem RAID 5350-8i adapter is an entry-level 12 Gb SAS/SATA internal RAID adapter manufactured by Lenovo that offers a cost-effective RAID solution for small to medium business customers. This cacheless adapter supports RAID levels 0/1/10/5, and include support for Lenovo management tools.

The ThinkSystem RAID 5350-8i supports up to eight internal SAS and SATA drives and is shown in the following figure.

Did you know?

The ThinkSystem RAID 5350-8i combines uncompromised HBA functionality with basic RAID support in hardware using the PM8222 SmartIOC 2100 controller. The adapter provides high levels of storage performance and scalability. The 8-port adapter can achieve up to 1.5M IOPS (random read using 4KB blocks).

Rigorous testing of the ThinkSystem RAID adapters by Lenovo through the ServerProven program ensures a high degree of confidence in storage subsystem compatibility and reliability. Providing an additional peace of mind, the controller is covered under Lenovo warranty.

Smart Storage, Connectivity and Hardware RAID

Today's data centers and enterprises need storage solutions that can keep pace with rapid data expansion. The RAID 5350 Series is the newest product in the Smart Storage solutions family, forged through the convergence of SAS/SATA protocol controller expertise, more than 30 years of Microchip board innovation and the Smart Storage stack.

The RAID 5350 Series, combines the capabilities of a full-featured HBA like the 4350 SAS/SATA HBA series with those of a basic RAID adapter using hardware RAID. With an optimal mix of resiliency, efficiency, and ease of use, it adds the robustness of true host-offloading hardware RAID, offers open-source driver compatibility and comes with a full set of storage management tools. The RAID 5350 Series offers the flexibility of internal and external connectivity in a low-profile/MD2 form factor.

Resiliency, Efficiency and Data Availability

The RAID 5350-8i is an ideal solution for server-based storage systems that require maximum bandwidth and I/O connectivity, low-power consumption, high reliability, plus options for data availability. The Smart Software stack even allows a combination of RAID and raw devices. This is useful in SDS environments where hardware RAID significantly increases OS boot reliability, but full HBA features and performance are otherwise needed.

The RAID 5350-8i also provides enhanced enclosure management capabilities to both RAID and raw devices, and enables enclosure services by providing a virtual SEP to software stacks if needed. The RAID 5350-8i offers over 40 percent power savings compared to prior generations and significant power advantages versus competing solutions, giving it the lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for an HBA/basic RAID solution. It delivers a robust and scalable solution that can handle the toughest system workloads and configurations, from an array of high-performance SSDs to high-capacity HDDs.

Maximum Performance

The RAID 5350 Series provides the highest levels of storage performance and scalability for next-generation data centers. The RAID 5350 provides connectivity to large numbers of storage devices, including HDDs and, SSDs. These storage devices can aggregate the performance of devices to the limits of the PCIe Gen3 host bus at 6.6 Gbps, and achieve up to 1.7M IOPS and 60 percent higher IOPS performance with SATA devices without additional overhead or latency.

Entry-Level RAID Functionality

The RAID 5350 combines uncompromised HBA functionality with basic RAID support in hardware using the PM8222 SmartIOC 2100 silicon. Robust RAID support is the same for all platforms and operating systems, providing a consistent user experience. Metadata compatibility with RAID 9350 Series products allows customers to upgrade to a full-feature hardware RAID solution with caching for acceleration if needed. The RAID 5350-8i supports up to 8 HDDs or SSDs in RAID configurations using RAID levels 0, 1, 10, or even RAID 5, and can simultaneously use RAID arrays and raw devices in mixed mode (default).

Consistency Check

Consistency check automatically checks your logical drives for bad or inconsistent data, and then fixes any problems. Enabling consistency check ensures that you can recover data if a drive fails. The scanning process checks physical drives in fault-tolerant logical drives for bad sectors. It also verifies the consistency of parity data, if applicable.

Unified Storage Management Utilities

maxView provides both server and remote administration, including proactive failure notification, and supports all 4350, 5350 and 9350 Series products. This browser-based tool suite supports all standard browsers, and is also available as an offline USB boot image. maxView adapter management components include the maxView GUI, an ARCCONF command-line tool, and an event monitor for logging and email alerts.

Support for Lenovo system management tools is listed in the following table.