Hot Deal - RocketRAID 4320 for $329
by Gary Key on March 20, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
We receive a lot of press releases each day for various products from a wide variety of sources. We will start providing these on a more timely basis, but one press release this week really caught our eye. HighPoint Technologies recently sent us their RocketRAID 4320 for a full review and now through a partnership with NewEgg, the cost has been reduced to $329 for a limited time. So far our testing results are very positive and we should have a review available shortly. In the meantime, here is the official press release.
"HighPoint Technologies is partnering with NewEgg.com the nationwide #2 ranking e-commerce website to offer the RocketRAID 4320 – an 8 port SAS RAID Controller with the Intel IOP348 for $329. The RocketRAID 4320 with the Intel IOP348 at 1.2GHz is the industry fastest and most reliable I/O Engine in the SAS RAID controller industry.
By offering the RocketRAID 4320 at $329 on NewEgg.com customers benefit from a 100% Savings when compared to other manufactures of 8 port SAS RAID controllers with the Intel IOP348 which are priced at $625.
HighPoint has recognized that the struggling economy has forced many businesses into offer lower costing products to entice customer spending. Offering the RocketRAID 4320 at $329 benefits the customer as they will get the highest value for their purchase with the industry’s highest performing and most robust SAS Hardware RAID controller.
The RocketAID 4320 supports the fastest bus speeds with PCI-Express x8 and offers two internal mini-SAS cable connectors that are fast, secure and clutter free. Support for a battery back up unit (BBU) maximizes data protection without sacrificing performance.
SAS scalability fulfills the ever increasing need for adding more storage capacity. Scaling to higher capacities enable customers to pay only for storage they need. Scalability is ideal for file server and content intensive storage platforms requiring the best combination of cost and capacity storage solution.
Backward compatibility to SATA hard drives fulfills the need of storage hungry applications. The lower cost and higher capacity SATA drives are ideal for back up, archiving and storing detail media files.
The higher performing 15K RPM SAS hard drives offers the highest sustained transfer rates for performance hungry applications. Streaming I/O involves digital video and requires high sustained read and write throughput. The RocketRAID 4320 with 15K RPM SAS drives can achieve 1GB/s of sustained throughput for these streaming I/O environments.
Don’t miss out on the huge savings for your storage needs. Purchase the RocketRAID 4320 for $329 exclusively through NewEgg.com."
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tshen83 - Sunday, March 22, 2009 - link
If you use ZFS, then use the Supermicro one here for $185. It is a UIO card, but it is electrically compatible with PCI-Express with the PCB mounted backwards.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
If you don't use ZFS, and have to use RAID firmware on the RAID card, then get the Adaptec 5405 for around the same cost.
All of those are IOP348 dual 1.2Ghz based. So performance wise, they are all the same.
Whatever do you, don't buy an Areca. They are overpriced POS IMHO.
tshen83 - Sunday, March 22, 2009 - link
As to the ports, don't get fooled, one 4x SAS port is enough. If you need to hook 8 or 16 or 24 drives, use the Supermicro M28E1 chassis. You can even daisy chain the M28E1s.(beauty of SAS expander technology)http://www.google.com/products?q=M28E1">http://www.google.com/products?q=M28E1
tshen83 - Monday, March 23, 2009 - link
One more thing to add:There are also dual core IOP348 800Mhz versions cards for real cheap from adaptec, Adaptec 2405 and 2045 depending on whether you want the SAS connection internal or external:
http://www.google.com/products?q=Adaptec+2405">http://www.google.com/products?q=Adaptec+2405
200 dollars without Supermicro UIO mess. But it is only dual core 800Mhz IOP348s. So you will probably get only 800MB/sec speed on this vs 1.2GB/sec RAIDs on the 5405s.
MarcusAsleep - Sunday, March 22, 2009 - link
Well,For the price, I think it would be a hard to beat deal. The card with two SAS ports, plus the necessary cables to hook up 8 SATA internal drives is great.
For the SuperMicro you'll need cables and a drive cage. Looks like the Highpoint has a lot of RAID options (0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 50 and JBOD) while the SuperMicro i version just does 0,1,10, and 5. Both have battery backup.
True hardware RAID at low power/heat for this price is pretty darn good IMO.
Cheers!
Mark.
P.S. Yeah, these cards are naturally careful with their initialization. They are made to run 24/7, not booted up every morning to check your email before school!
MarcusAsleep - Monday, March 23, 2009 - link
Oops,Sorry looks like these are not SAS to SATA cables - I was thinking of the ones that come with the 2340.
We're using 4 of these 2340's now -- ok except have trouble with non-enterprise SATA drives (occasionally marks them erroneously bad and you have to take them out and reformat them and put them back in -- glad were doing RAID 10!)
Not sure of cable prices -- anyone?
Mark.
StormyParis - Friday, March 20, 2009 - link
my vote: 2-fri2219 - Friday, March 20, 2009 - link
It's a fools bargain when their drivers don't work and support would have to improve to be merely atrocious.Buy that kind of crap for me and I'll fire you.
DigitalFreak - Saturday, March 21, 2009 - link
This from the guy comparing Windows CE to a cow abortion over in the "Ballmer Blasts Apple" thread.davidlants - Friday, March 20, 2009 - link
If this were truly 100% discounted it would cost $0, making it a truly remarkable deal ;). I think they mean it's discounted 50%. . .mindless1 - Saturday, March 21, 2009 - link
... or it's no longer marked up 200%?