Siltek Group company, One Technology Group (OTG), has brought the Distributed Processing Technology (DPT) Ultra160 SCSI hardware RAID controller, the SmartRAID VI Decade, to the local market.
"The new controller, dubbed Decade, is DPT's sixth generation RAID controller. It offers support for Ultra160 SCSI and Fibre Channel, and is designed for entry-level and small business servers, as well as power workstation users," says Charmaine Finniss, product manager at OTG.
"What distinguishes the Decade from its competition is the fact that it can be upgraded to full Fibre Channel functionality," says Finniss. In addition, she says the Decade is one of he first PCI-based hardware RAID controllers on the market supporting the new Ultra160 SCSI standard. Ultra160 SCSI features a maximum data transfer rate of 160MB/sec per channel, doubling the Ultra2 SCSI maximum rate of 80MB/sec. It also includes Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC), and Domain Validation for data reliability.
"Previous versions of SCSI used parity checking to detect transmission errors. CRC adds an error detection capability for high-speed data transfer and device hot-swap events," says Finniss. Domain Validation is a feature that ensures data transfer between devices is reliable and operates at maximum speed.
The controller is being made available as hard disk manufacturers begin shipping Ultra160 SCSI disk drives. Decade's backward compatibility will allow OTG to upgrade servers to the new standard without compromising existing installations.
All Decade controllers include an embedded Intel i960 RISC processor to enhance performance and reduce host CPU utilisation, as well as being PCI 2.2 and I2O compliant. Included is 4MB of EDO cache memory, flash-upgradeable firmware and BIOS, full-featured storage management GUI configuration and storage management software and BIOS-based setup. A RAID configuration utility and command line management utility are also included.
The Decade supports various operating systems, including Windows NT, Windows 2000, Win 95/98, Linux, NetWare, SCO OpenServer 5, SCO 3.2.4.2, SCO UnixWare 7, UnixWare 2.1.4.2, BSDi, and FreeBSD. "Because of this open approach to the operating system, the Decade allows OTG customers to operate a flexible environment," says Finniss.
In addition, remote management and event notification features allow storage to be accessed and managed from anywhere in the world.
"The Decade has a modular design making it scalable, thus improving the life-span of the device within the corporate world," says Finniss. As requirements grow, so can Decade's performance with the RAID Accelerator module (RA4060). Finniss says: "The RA4060 allows the addition of up to 128MB of ECC-protected EDO cache memory and includes DPT's 'Domino' high-speed RAID engine."
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One Technology Group
One Technology Group is a member of JSE-listed Siltek Limited, SA's largest IT Supply Chain Group. One Technology Group is the Own Brand company in the Siltek IT Supply Chain Group.
Siltek Limited
Siltek Limited is the leader in the Southern African Information Technology (IT) Supply Chain with projected turnover of R3-billion in the year to end-June 2000. Listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Siltek comprises several complementary operating divisions, each of which is a dominant player in its niche area.