Howdy folks, I just spent the last few days standing around IDF in Beijing showing off Adaptec’s latest 7 series controller. We also had on display our new range of HBAs. Yes, Adaptec is back in the HBA game … it’s been a long time since we had one, but SAS HBA is back on [...]

There are two different types of backplanes in this world – passive and active. Passive are just really devices that allow a connection between the drive and card – there is no expander involved. Active backplanes on the other hand have an expander – a chip device made by third-party vendors to the backplane vendor. [...]

I wonder if Steven Spielberg had any idea what a phrase that would become … Adaptec have taken up the idea and released a new series of HBAs. So what is an HBA I hear you ask out there in Channel storage land? A Host Bust Adapter of course. Think back to the 90s … [...]

All I ever hear about these days is “big data”. It’s a like saying “old Neil” – pretty much a natural consequence of getting out of bed each day. Big data is a nice term trying to point out that we have lots of data, and we are more and more often putting it in [...]

I recently copped a slam from one of my customers due to the fact that they had stability problems in their system and the customer was pointing the finger at the RAID card. When I pointed out to the customer that yes, the drive was on our compatibility report but no, the firmware the customer [...]

For those of you with a technical bent, there is a new standard around in backplane land called IBPI. It’s a new format for LED function on backplanes. In reality, to my understanding, it’s an extension of the SGPIO standard we’ve been living with for a while. So there is SGPIO “Standard” and SGPIO “IBPI”. [...]

Big call, with absolutely no stats to back it up … but I’m making it anyway. Every time I talk to a customer and think to myself “they should be using SSDs” I then think to myself “no, they’re too expensive”. And when I start talking to customers about such products as Intel 520s, they [...]

Welcome to 2013 … The hand is back in working order (thanks to motorbike and deer meeting) – so now it’s time to tell you about our new firmware release for our Series 6 and Series 7 controllers. It was actually released in 2012 but since most of you were on holidays by then I’m [...]

We seem to be back on the drive firmware update path again. I recently had an issue with a customer system running desktop drives (yes, I know they shouldn’t but they do).  I checked the drive firmware with what I knew to be the latest from my drive vendor mate … and it was out [...]

Can’t remember exactly what that line is from (possibly a TV ad from my younger days), but it basically tells a story in the RAID industry. I’m continually getting customers (a) telling me what they are doing, then (b) ending up asking me how to put it all together because “they are not really experts at [...]