American Megatrends ships High Performance RAID controllers

"With support for all RAID levels and advanced MegaRAID management utilities including FlexRAID, AMI's on-line capacity expansion and RAID level migration application, AMI's MegaRAID controllers outperform all other controllers in their respective class," said Sanjay Sehgal, AMI's Director of RAID Sales. "And AMI's new generation of RAID controllers fully support Microsoft clustering using MSCS."

Powered by advanced Intel RISC-based processors, each MegaRAID controller also comes with complete RAID configuration and management software, and an extensive suite of OS drivers including: Linux, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Novell NetWare, SCO UNIX, UNIXWare, SMP, DOS, Solaris and OS/2.

AMI's new family of RAID controllers includes:

MegaRAID Enterprise

AMI's high-end enterprise-level RAID controllers feature multi-channel PCI RAID solutions for dual, quad and eight-way servers. The MegaRAID Enterprise line includes Ultra and Ultra2 LVD solutions including AMI's new 64-bit MegaRAID Enterprise 1500 controller.

This high performance Ultra2 LVD SCSI RAID controller employs the latest 64-Bit PCI RAID technology using the Intel i960RN I/O processor with a 100 MHz internal JX core. Surrounded completely by 64-bit architecture, along with four Ultra2 SCSI channels, the Enterprise 1500 reaches sustained sequential throughput of 210 MB/sec. and a random I/O rate of more than 8,000 I/Os per second. The Enterprise 1500 is the only 64-bit PCI RAID controller that offers an upgrade path to support 160M SCSI in Q4 `99 with a data transfer rate of 160 MB/sec. per SCSI channel. The controller also stores up to 128 MB cache using a single, industry standard ECC SDRAM DIMM and on-board battery backup for cache memory.

The Enterprise 1500 also features AMI's WebBIOS(TM), a revolutionary RAID utility that features a browser-user interface (BUI)-based, OS independent configuration utility at the BIOS level.

MegaRAID Explorer

AMI also features a series of OS independent, external RAID controllers for flexible storage subsystems. The MegaRAID Explorer line includes the MegaRAID Explorer 500, AMI's Fibre-to-LVD external RAID controller. The 3.5" form factor external RAID controller features two fibre channels for host connection and two Ultra2 LVD SCSI channels to the drives. Powered by Intel's 64-bit i960RN processor with embedded RISC CPU running at 100 MHz and surrounded completely by true 64-bit bus architecture, the Explorer 500 can reach a sustained data transfer rate of greater than 110 MB/sec.

The Explorer 500 also offers unmatched fault tolerant features such as on-board battery backup, auto-detection of failed drives and configuration on disk. With multiple hardware configurations, including a canister version and back-plane version, the Explorer 500 is the ideal solution for storage area network (SAN) environments. The external RAID controller also includes configurable cache support using up to 128 MB ECC SDRAM, enhancing its performance beyond EDO-based external controllers.

MegaRAID Express

For cost-sensitive single to dual processor servers and performance workstations, AMI offers the MegaRAID Express line of high speed, low-cost PCI RAID controllers. This line includes zero channel controllers that convert a server motherboard's own SCSI channels into high-performance RAID channels, as well as single channel LVD solutions with up to 100 MHz I/O processors, including the new MegaRAID Express 300. This low-cost, high performance, single-channel controller with available MSCS clustering support, also includes configurable cache using up to 128 MB ECC SDRAM.