LSI offers new 6Gb/s SAS RAID-controllers

LSI has just announced some new RAID controller cards using 6 GB/s SAS technology. The new MegaRAID 9200 series uses the LSISAS2108 RAID-on-Chip controller, which gives them a significant speed boost over earlier models.

The new controller support a mix of SAS, SATA and SSD drives, and can use self-encrypting drives, providing the key management on the RAID controller itself. This is a pretty new market, and it remains to be seen whether storing the encryption keys on the RAID controller is a good idea, but the support is there anyway.

Both a 4-port and 8-port model are available (MegaRAID SAS 9260-4i and 9260-8i). The 8-port model is optionally available with external connectors (9280-8e) and with the data encryption option (9260DE-8i and 9280DE-8e). Pricing starts from $389 for the 4-port internal model, going up to $945 for the 9280DE-8e.

For more information check LSI’s RAID product pages; for pictures of the new controllers click here: [9260-4i] [9260-8i] [9280-8e]