Delivering unprecedented performance and reliability, the scalable, SANgear 4002 and 6002 Active-Active 2Gb Fibre Channel RAID Controllers are designed for achieving the highest level of data availability, performance, and storage sharing.

Featuring four (SANgear 4002) or six (SANgear 6002) 2Gb redundant Fibre Channel host channels, SANgear Active-Active RAID controllers ensure superior performance, extreme reliability and exceptional data availability in today's most data-intensive environments. The modular design of the SANgear minimizes maintenance time and increases scalability in SAN environments with high storage capacities that demand superior performance.

Equipped with two fully redundant, hot-swappable 300 Watt power supply units, the uniquely designed 19" durable rack mountable enclosure comes with complete component redundancy and 2Gb Fibre Channel support that includes dual-loops and multi-host configurations. The SANgear 4002/6002 features RAID Cache battery backup modules with two Lithium-Ion battery cells on each RAID controller. These battery backup modules can sustain 1GB of cached data for up to 72 hours.

The SANgear has been customized to perform in the most rigorous storage environments where data availability is an imperative. The SANgear 4002/6002's dual-redundant RAID controllers are perfect for applications that require 24x7 availability. With redundant hot-swappable power supplies, RAID controllers, cooling modules, IO node modules, battery backup units, and management interface modules, the SANgear has all of the necessary functionality to ensure the system will survive catastrophic events.

Based on an architecture designed for the most demanding applications, the SANgear 4002/6002 is capable of very high levels of performance. Its 64-bit separate-bus backbone is built around dedicated XOR engines running at twice the data bus speed. The calculation of parity and distribution of data can be optimized with the free association between individual logical arrays and different optimization modes.

Featuring a 64-bit 133MHz memory bus, the unparalleled bandwidth makes the SANgear 4002/6002 RAID's high data throughput more than sufficient for small-to-medium sized servers or workstations. Data can be distributed at the burst rate of up to 1066MB/second. The dual independent PCI bus design virtually eliminates all imminent bottlenecks on IO traffic, providing sufficient throughput for a wide range of applications on Fibre-based PCs, single-user workstations, NT, Linux, or Unix-based servers. These applications include disk-to-disk backup, Video on Demand, CCTV, and stream editing.

Media Scan is an innovative Intelligent Drive Handling function that can be used for data retrieval from degraded or damaged hard drives. If two bad blocks occur on two member drives of an array, the integrity of the stored data will be endangered. Intelligent Drive Handling capabilities can be used to retrieve data from the damaged sectors. Media Scan is able to handle low quality drives in both degraded mode and during the rebuild process. Other Intelligent Drive Handling features, which provide further data security, include the transparent resetting of hung hard drives, power-failure management, and bad drive handling during Logical Disk expansion.

The Java-based GUI manager provides easy-to-use interfaces, is rich in configuration options, and allows users to remotely manage their storage system over a network. Event monitor and notification processing center submodules provide system managers the freedom of real-time monitoring with a variety of notification methods.

When a RAID controller detects the conditions that exceed the preset thresholds, the following actions will be initiated to protect the hardware:

1. Cached data will be automatically flushed and the array's caching mode will be switched from write-back to write-through.
2. If the conditions persist past a preset period of time, auto shutdown of the controller will commence.

Impressively, all the thresholds associated with this mechanism are user configurable and, once a subsystem manager restores the normal operating conditions, the caching mode will change back from the write-through mode to the write-back mode.