3ware Escalade 8500-8

3ware Escalade 8500-8 ... switching architecture, each disk drive has its own dedicated port, increasing throughput and enhancing reliability. 3ware delivers unmatched capacity, scalability and performance using inexpensive Serial ATA disk drives. The Escalade 8500 Serial ATA controllers set the standard for Serial ATA RAID.

Traditional technologies such as parallel ATA and SCSI use a bus-based architecture wherein all the drives share a single bus, with a resulting compromise in performance. The Serial ATA architecture provides point-to-point communication, delivering full bandwidth to each connected drive when a switched architecture is employed. 3ware's non-blocking switched fabric design allows the controller to simultaneously access to all drives, delivering much higher performance than competitive Serial ATA solutions.

Serial ATA provides significant cabling benefits compared to parallel ATA. It eliminates the need for bulky parallel cables and allows for significantly improved airflow inside the RAID enclosures. Standard ATA drives can still take advantage of Serial ATA cabling. 3ware's Parallel-to-Serial Converter turns a parallel ATA drive into a serial interface. This allows users to immediately take advantage of Serial ATA's longer and thinner cable (1 meter), superior airflow and easier assembly while still using standard ATA hard disk drives. The 8500 Series controllers are PCI short form-factor half-length cards - ideal for rack-mounted system designs. The rear-exit cable connectors make cabling assembly and routing easy and straightforward.

The Escalade 8500 series includes a complete suite of software and firmware for creating, deleting, verifying and rebuilding arrays, making installation and set-up easy. 3DM, 3ware's web browser array management utility allows local and remote management and monitoring of arrays and their disks from any standard web browser. 3ware's advanced firmware delivers many of the features one expects with more expensive SCSI drives and controllers, but not typically available in ATA controllers or drives. These include command re-ordering, elevator seeks, dynamic sector repair, asynchronous error messaging and more.

The Escalade 8500 Series of ATA RAID controllers are the highest performing, highest capacity Serial ATA controllers available. 3ware's mature 4th generation RAID architecture and software has been deployed in thousands of mission critical servers so users can be confident that their data is protected. Utilizing StorSwitch non-blocking switched architecture, Escalade 8500 series are the only Serial ATA controllers that truly unleash the benefits of Serial ATA, delivering performance levels previously only seen with multi-channel SCSI RAID cards.