Intel S5000XAL manual Serial ATA Support, Intel Embedded Server RAID Technology II Support

Functional Architecture Intel® Server Board S5000PAL / S5000XAL TPS

Full Height PCI Express*	1 add-in card populated	2 add-in cards populated	3 add-in cards populated
Riser
1U – 1 add-in card slot	x4 or x8	NA	NA
2U – 3 add-in card slots	Single PCIe* x4 in either	Single PCIe* – x4 in either	Dual PCIe* – x4
	slot or x8 in middle slot	slot or x8 in middle slot and	And
	Or	PCI-X* – Up to 133MHz	PCI-X* – Up to 133MHz
	PCI-X* – Up to 133MHz in	Or
	bottom slot	Dual PCIe – x4

3.2.2Serial ATA Support

The ESB-2 has an integrated Serial ATA (SATA) controller that supports independent DMA operation on six ports and supports data transfer rates of up to 3.0 Gb/s. The six SATA ports on the server board are numbered SATA-0 thru SATA-5. The SATA ports can be enabled/disabled and/or configured by accessing the BIOS Setup Utility during POST.

3.2.2.1Intel® Embedded Server RAID Technology II Support

The onboard storage capability of this server board includes support for Intel® Embedded Server RAID Technology which provides three standard software RAID levels: data stripping (RAID Level 0), data mirroring (RAID Level 1), and data stripping with mirroring (RAID Level 10). For higher performance, data stripping can be used to alleviate disk bottlenecks by taking advantage of the dual independent DMA engines that each SATA port offers. Data mirroring is used for data security. Should a disk fail, a mirrored copy of the failed disk is brought on-line. There is no loss of either PCI resources (request/grant pair) or add-in card slots.

With the addition of an optional Intel RAID Activation Key, Intel® Embedded Server RAID Technology is also capable of providing fault tolerant data stripping (software RAID Level 5), such that if a SATA hard drive should fail, the lost data can be restored on a replacement drive from the other drives that make up the RAID 5 pack.

See Figure 1. Components & Connector Location Diagram for the location of Intel RAID Activation Key connector location.

Note: Availability of the Intel RAID Activation Key to support software RAID 5 will be deferred until after product launch of this server board.

Intel® Embedded Server RAID Technology functionality requires the following items:

•Intel® ESB-2 IO Controller Hub

•Intel® Embedded Server RAID Technology Option ROM

•Intel® Application Accelerator RAID Edition drivers, most recent revision

•At least two SATA hard disk drives

Intel® Embedded Server RAID Technology is not available in the following configurations:

•The SATA controller in compatible mode

•Intel® Embedded Server RAID Technology has been disabled

36Revision 1.4

Intel order number: D31979-007