Home PMC Adaptec 82885T 12Gb/s SAS Expander Card Announced

PMC Adaptec 82885T 12Gb/s SAS Expander Card Announced

by Lyle Smith

PMC has announced the industry’s first 12Gb/s SAS expander card, the Adaptec 82885T, to enable density-optimized servers. The Adaptec 82885T enables flexible, high-density server architectures with the ability to expand as the requirements for data center storage grow. PMC's new expander card provides 36 ports in a PCIe low-profile form factor along with internal connectivity for up to 24 SAS or SATA drives as well as an additional eight external ports to connect JBODs for even greater capacity expansion on a single RAID controller or Host Bus Adapter. The expander card also enables modular passive backplane architectures to reduce server variants and increase data center operating efficiency.


PMC has announced the industry’s first 12Gb/s SAS expander card, the Adaptec 82885T, to enable density-optimized servers. The Adaptec 82885T enables flexible, high-density server architectures with the ability to expand as the requirements for data center storage grow. PMC's new expander card provides 36 ports in a PCIe low-profile form factor along with internal connectivity for up to 24 SAS or SATA drives as well as an additional eight external ports to connect JBODs for even greater capacity expansion on a single RAID controller or Host Bus Adapter. The expander card also enables modular passive backplane architectures to reduce server variants and increase data center operating efficiency.
 
The Adaptec 12Gb/s SAS expander card is the industry’s only expander that fits in a low-profile MD2 form factor with a power consumption of less than 25 Watts. It mounts internally to any available PCIe slot away from the backplane and features mini-SAS HD connectors located at the top for added cabling flexibility in complex server environments. In addition, the expander card can receive power either from the PCIe slot or via a standard 4-pin auxiliary power connector. The card also is compatible with SGPIO and SES2 enclosure management, which allows enclosure information to be routed from all daisy-chained expander cards to the HBA or RAID adapter.

With its buffering capabilities, it improves the performance of 6Gb/s SAS+SATA, allowing data centers to take full advantage of their existing drives as well as the newest 12Gb/s SAS devices to achieve maximum throughput. The expander card is compatible with all HDDs and SSDs, existing active and passive backplanes, and all Adaptec Series 8, Series 7 and Series 6 RAID adapters and HBAs. In addition, it compatible with several 3rd party RAID adapters and HBAs.

Availability

The Adaptec 82885T 12Gb/s SAS expander card slated for an October 2014 release through Adaptec’s worldwide distributors and storage channel partners.