Product Reviews

Hard disks

LSI Logic MegaRAID SATA 150-6 [PC Pro]
COMPANY: LSI Logic	PRICE: Ł312 (exc VAT)
RATING:	ISSUE: 111 DATE: Jan 04

Verdict: A good-value proposition offering a sextet of RAID-enabled SATA ports, although LSI Logic could do much better in the management stakes.

LSI Logic's family of SATA RAID controllers extends to three products offering two-, four- or six-port options. In terms of specification, there are few differences between Adaptec's 2410SA and the SATA 150-6 on review, as they both utilise the same Intel processor alongside 64MB of on-board cache memory. Neither card supports memory upgrades, but the SATA 150-6 does accept an optional battery backup pack. The card is larger than the 2410SA; so, while not a problem for most server duties, it won't be such a good fit in the latest SATA-based 1U rack servers.

The SATA 150-6 is easy to configure from its BIOS utility, which provides tools for creating, deleting and viewing arrays and adding new disks or

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designating them as hot spares. RAID options are marginally better than Adaptec's, as with six ports up for grabs it's possible to create a RAID-50 array that consists of a triple-disk RAID-5 array mirrored to the other three drives.

LSI Logic loses out in the management stakes, though, as its Windows Power Console Plus utility is looking tired and in need of graphical refreshment. It does provide facilities for managing RAID controllers locally and remotely, but browser access isn't supported. Furthermore, in the event of an error, you can sound the system buzzer, but there are no options for sending out an email. On the plus side, you get a wizard to help with array creation and you can add new drives to existing arrays or keep them to one side as hot spares. We called in the same Western Digital Raptor SATA drives for performance testing and created a simple RAID-0 striped array. Iometer reported an average transfer rate of 60.6MB/sec, showing there's nothing to separate Adaptec and LSI Logic for overall performance.

The SATA 150-6 initially looks better value than the 2410SA, as it provides six SATA ports, improved RAID options and includes support for Novell NetWare. There's nothing to tell them apart for performance, but Adaptec offers superior remote-management facilities.

By Dave Mitchell

SPECIFICATIONS:
SATA RAID controller; 64-bit, 66MHz PCI card; 6 x SATA/150 ports; Intel 80302 66MHz I/O processor; 64MB ECC SDRAM cache memory; supports RAID-0, -1, -10, -5, -50 and JBOD; drivers for Windows NT, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Novell NetWare 5.1/6, Red Hat Linux and Power Console Plus management software bundled; 6 x SATA cables supplied.