LSI Intros SFF SATA Card

MILPITAS, Calif. -- LSI Corporation (NYSE: LSI) today introduced the industrys first small form factor Serial ATA (SATA) interposer card. The new interposer card provides OEMs with a time-to-market advantage for implementing 2.5-inch SATA drives in enterprise-class storage arrays, including SAS and Fibre Channel-SATA (FC-SATA) infrastructures.

The new SS9135 SATA interposer card offers OEMs a turnkey board solution that is completely designed and assembled ahead of time, resulting in significant cost, engineering and manufacturing savings. With these freed resources, systems OEMs can more rapidly integrate low-cost, high-capacity 2.5-inch SATA drives in enterprise systems for near-line and tiered-storage applications.

“Enterprise storage users have come to rely heavily on the cost and capacity benefits provided by 3.5-inch SATA drives,” said Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst, The StorageIO Group. “As the industry begins to adopt smaller form factor drives, it’s essential that users continue to have the option of leveraging SATA hard drives with active-active interfaces for resiliency in their infrastructure. With its new SS9135 interposer card, LSI is making this a reality and providing OEMs with an opportunity to easily integrate 2.5-inch SATA drives into enterprise systems with the right enterprise-class features including active-active access.”

The new SS9135 card is based on the fourth-generation SS1350 Active-Active Multiplexer (AAMUX®) device from LSI, delivering enterprise-class reliability, manageability and performance features that complement mainstream SATA hard drives. AAMUX technology enables single-ported SATA drives to connect like native dual-ported drives for use in enterprise storage systems using SAS expanders supporting the SATA tunneling protocol (SAS-STP), and in systems using FC-to-SATA routers. The SS1350 device brings true active-active multiplexing to the SATA drive, resulting in much higher performance and reduced system development costs. The SS1350 is a smaller form factor package, derived from the currently shipping SS1320, that enables a vertical interposer card to be implemented into a 2.5-inch drive tray. The SS1350 device is only available as a part of the turnkey SS9135 board solution.

“Now more than ever, end users are looking for ways to optimize power and cooling efficiencies in their storage systems, while also looking to increase performance and capacity in a given amount of rack space,” said Dan Roehrich, vice president of marketing, Storage Components Group, Network and Storage Products Group, LSI. “These demands are giving way to the emergence of small form factor drives for enterprise storage systems. With our new SATA interposer card we are easing this transition by providing system OEMs with a fully tested and interoperable turnkey solution that enables easy deployment of 2.5-inch SATA drives in various enterprise infrastructures.”LSI Corp.