Technology considerations in selecting a direct attached storage solution for HP ProLiant Gen8 servers

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Host bus adapters
HP has embedded and PCIe interface HBAs available for environments that do not require the added
security of hardware RAID but might need boot drives, JBOD, or software RAID arrays. HP H-Series
HBAs support 6 Gb/s SATA and SAS hard disk drives (HDDs) and SSDs, backplanes within the
server chassis, and SAS connection to external storage devices. These adapters also support multi-
LUN tape drives.
Smart Array controllers
HP Smart Array Controllers are powerful I/O solutions for the most demanding storage requirements.
Smart Array Controllers allow adding drives for capacity growth. They have higher performance
using more drives and additional RAID levels, better data availability, and advanced data security
and management features.
Our latest controllers have technology that increases performance and reliability:
• Roughly 3x IOPS (input/output operations per second) and 4x RAID 5 performance of our previous
controllers, dependent on configuration
• Support for up to 200 drives with Smart Array Controller P421
• Predictive spare activation by which the array controller rebuilds a pre-failure drive to a spare,
before the drive fails
• Flash Backed Write Cache (FBWC) instead of battery backed write cache for reduced maintenance
downtime and improved data security
• Advanced Data Mirroring (ADM) using 3 drives (enabled by SAAP 2.0)―more reliable for data
protection than traditional 2 drive mirror or 3 drive RAID 5
HP P-Series Smart Array Controllers offer advanced storage performance, availability, and security.
Table 1 lists some characteristics of P-series controllers for our ProLiant Gen8 servers.