LSI MegaRAID Express 500 - Manual (Page 15)

Chapter 1 Overview 1
1 Overview
The MegaRAID® Express 500 PCI RAID controller is a high performance intelligent
PCI-to-SCSI host adapter with RAID control capabilities. The MegaRAID Express 500
provides reliability, high performance, and fault-tolerant disk subsystem management.
The MegaRAID Express 500 is part of the LSI Logic Intel i960RM/RS-based MegaRAID
controller family. The MegaRAID Express 500 is an entry level-to mid-range RAID
controller solution. MegaRAID Express 500 offers a cost-effective way to implement
RAID in a server.
The MegaRAID Express 500 has a 160M Ultra and Wide SCSI channel supporting data
transfer rates up to 160 megabytes per second (MB/s) per channel. The SCSI channel
supports up to fifteen non-Ultra SCSI devices. MegaRAID Express 500 includes
MegaRAID features and performance.
Features MegaRAID Express 500:
• provides a high performance I/O migration path while preserving existing PCI-SCSI software
• performs SCSI data transfers up to 160 MB/s
• performs synchronous operation on a wide LVD SCSI bus
• allows up to 15 LVD SCSI devices on the wide bus
• includes an Intel® i960RM that performs RAID calculations and routing
• supports 8, 16, 32, 64, or 128 MB of SDRAM cache memory in a DIMM socket used for read
and write-back caching and RAID 5 parity generation
SCSI Channel The MegaRAID Express 500 upgrade card includes one Ultra3 SCSI channel. The
channel is powered by a Q-Logic ISP10160A 160M SCSI processor.
NVRAM and Flash ROM A 32 KB x 8 NVRAM stores RAID system configuration information. The
MegaRAID Express 500 firmware is stored in flash ROM for easy upgrade.
SCSI Connectors MegaRAID Express 500 has one ultra high density 68-pin external connector for
external storage subsystem and one high density 68-pin internal connector.