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The Adaptec 6Gb/s Series 6 family of raid adapters is designed to meet a broad range of storage requirements.
Series 6E – For entry-level systems, affordable, hardware RAID (SATA/SAS) adapters with on-board DRAM that outperform software-based HBAs and SATA controllers. Series 6E supports Hardware RAID levels 0, 1, 1E, 10 and JBOD and PCIe Gen2 x4 interface (6805E) and x1 interface (6405E). Both form factor are shorter than MD2 and ZMCP is not supported on Series 6E.
Series 6 and Series 6T – High performance raid adapters deliver superior bandwidth and reliability, energy efficiency and operating costs savings. The only difference is Series 6T has recessed top-mounted connectors for dense-server applications. Series 6 and 6T support Hardware RAID levels 0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50, 60 and JBOD and PCIe Gen 2 x8 interface.
Series 6Q and Series 6TQ – For data center environments, they include all Series 6 features plus maxCache 2.0 SSD caching for maximum performance. Series 6Q and 6TQ support Hardware RAID levels 0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50, 60 and JBOD and PCIe Gen 2 x8 interface.
Both are optimized for entry-level systems. The Series 6E offer 6Gb/s throughput at each port while the Series 2 offer 3Gb/s throughput. In addition to that, Series 6E fits into platforms with that are equipped with a x1 or x4 PCI Express slot while Series 2 requires at minimum a x8 PCI connector on the motherboard
Series 6E adapters are ideal for desktop use and the entry-level server platforms, workstations or industrial PCs where a Series 6 adapter would not fit in from a price, form factor or host connectivity standpoint.
The Adaptec RAID 6405E uses a PCIe Gen 2 x1 connection which is optimized for connectivity. It can be plugged into any x1 PCIe slot (Gen1, Gen2, Gen3). The Adaptec 6805E is optimized for bandwidth / throughput and requires a x4 PCIe port. While supporting Gen2 slots, the card can run in Gen1, Gen2 and Gen3 slots as well. Both cards can run in a slot that has a higher number of PCIe lanes. For example, while the Adaptec RAID 6805E uses 4 lanes (x4 connector), it can also operate in a slot that has 8 lanes or more (e.g. a PCIe x8 slot or PCIe x16 slot).
Entry-level raid adapters typically have several drawbacks. Either RAID is implemented in software only, which limits its robustness, or it comes without the support for DRAM caching, which limits performance.
Adaptec Series 6E Unified Serial SATA/SAS raid adapters feature hardware RAID and run the same "Adaptec RAID Code" (ARC) as Adaptec Series 6 RAID
controllers. They also come with the same drivers, BIOS and storage management tools as Series 6 adapters and do not require additional training.
The fastest way for a RAID adapter to fulfill a read or write request is to serve data out of its cache. Savvy network administrators know that enabling the RAID adapter cache offers significant performance benefits, such as reduced latency in I/O requests, bandwidth and queue depths that surpass software application limits, and on-the-fly parity calculations on sequential writes.
Hybrid RAID arrays are mirrors of Solid State Drives (SSDs) and Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) offer tremendous performance gains over standard HDD RAID arrays by performing read operations from the faster SSD and write operations on both the SSD and HDD. The result is a higher number of read operations per second with no significant degradation of write I/O performance, and complete transparency to the operating system and all running applications.
The Series 6 RAID adapter family supports standard RAID levels 0, 1, 1E, 10, and JBOD. It also supports Copyback Hot Spare, which allows the user to specify a fixed physical location for the hot spare for improved manageability.
The Series 6E family supports a long list of operating systems including Windows, Linux, VMware, Solaris, and FreeBSD. For a complete list of available operating systems and drivers, please consult the Adaptec support site.
Adaptec Storage Manager™ is a one-view utility that centralizes management of all Adaptec RAID products. Adaptec Storage Manager enables remote RAID management, monitoring, and configuration through secure, encrypted communication.
ARCCONF (Command Line Interface – CLI) - Text-based command line interface that provides the same functions as Adaptec Storage Manager in environments where a GUI is not available.
BIOS configuration utility (ACU) – used for quick and easy local setup without booting the OS.
Series 6E adapters support SATA and SAS devices, and have been qualified
with the same systems, motherboards, backplanes and drives as Series 6 adapters. Series 6E adapters have also been thoroughly tested with
entry-level storage devices for desktop use and the entry-level server platforms, workstations and motherboards most typically used for basic servers,
performance workstations or industrial PCs.
Yes, Series 6E is fully compatible with its predecessors: Series 2 and Series 5. Existing RAID arrays can be migrated from Series 2 and Series 5 to Series 6E and vice versa. Series 6E adapters can co-exist in the same system with Series 1-5 adapters.
The Series 6E raid adapters have been extensively tested with third-party systems to deliver the utmost in compatibility, now and in the future. Each is backed by a 3-year warranty and Adaptec industry-leading technical support.
SAS/SATA adapters, like the Series 6 family, support both SATA and SAS disk drives using a serial point-to-point interface. The command set is an enriched SCSI command set providing robust data management, error handling, and performance characteristics.
This flexibility of supporting both SATA and SAS disk drives makes it easy for companies to standardize on a single I/O infrastructure for both mission-critical storage and secondary storage – dependent solely upon whether SATA or SAS disk drives are installed. Customers can standardize on a single I/O adapter or storage system for all of their storage configurations, reducing training and repair costs.
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