Advantech's SCSI Rear Transition Board - an Optimal RAID Storage Solution

Taipei, Taiwan, Dec. 21, 2004 – Advantech’s new CompactPCI rear transition board series, the RIO-3309S, uses an Adaptec 7901X Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) controller to offer as much bandwidth as the more common IDE disk drive. A leader in industrial computing, Advantech offers a complete line of rear transition board products, bringing total flexibility to cPCI platform configuration. CompactPCI form factors allow for routing front I/O connections to the rear side through the backplane. With these connections transferred through the backplane, the rear  I/O transition module can be installed. Cabling is managed by the transition board, providing efficient trouble-shooting, and enhancing the reliability and availability of the system during servicing. 

Storage solutions are an integral component of many CompactPCI-based telecom application servers, including media servers, billing servers, application servers and feature servers. A SCSI Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) system is a cost-effective, mainstream storage solution with the best performance in data throughput and reliability among RAID systems. The RIO-3309S series incorporates the Adaptec 7901X controller chip to deliver SCSI Ultra 320 performance with a 64-bit/66 MHz PCI bus. The RIO-3309S series provides data transfer not only between the board and external devices, but also between the board and SCSI RAID devices that support RAID functions 0, 1, and 5.

The RIO-3309S series offers two SCSI interfaces to choose from: an internal SCSI interface (RIO-3309S-A1), and an external SCSI interface (RIO-3309S-A2). The decision to deploy internal or external RAID capability for a CompactPCI application platform depends on the desired amount of data storage, the RAID level, the availability of payload slots, and the need for centralized system management. External RAID systems are a more attractive choice when there is a need for scalability, a high-level RAID system, and shared access to the RAID system across multiple CompactPCI platforms.

In addition, the RIO-3309S series is equipped with two Gigabit Ethernet ports, one VGA port, one COM port, one USB port, and one PS/2 port to fulfill various applications requirements. The RIO-3309S series is designed for use with Advantech’s 6U CompactPCI MIC-3369/MIC-3359/MIC-3358 CPU boards, which are ideal for large-scale data acquisition and storage, and telecommunications applications.