ServeRAID M5110 SAS/SATA Controller

The ServeRAID M5110 and M5110e SAS/SATA controllers are 6 Gb SAS/SATA internal RAID controllers. This adapter and embeded controller are part of the ServeRAID M Series family of products that offers a complete server storage solution, consisting of RAID controllers, cache/flash modules, energy packs, and software feature upgrades in an ultra-flexible offerings structure.

This product guide provides essential presales information to understand the ServeRAID M5110 offerings and their key features, specifications, and compatibility. This guide is intended for technical specialists, sales specialists, sales engineers, IT architects, and other IT professionals who want to learn more about the ServeRAID M5110 and M5110e and consider their use in IT solutions.

Changes in the January 20 update:

• Clarified that Feature on Demand upgrades activate the feature on all M5200 Series and M5100 Series controllers that are installed in the server. In addition, the M5100 Series Zero Cache/RAID 5 Upgrade also activates the equivalent upgrades for M1100 and M1200 Series controllers when installed in the same server.
• Updated the list of supported operating systems – Operating system support section
• Updated the related links – Related publications and links section
• Removed withdrawn drives – Drive support section

Introduction

The ServeRAID M5110 and M5110e SAS/SATA controllers are 6 Gb SAS/SATA internal RAID controllers. This adapter and embeded controller are part of the ServeRAID M Series family of products that offers a complete server storage solution, consisting of RAID controllers, cache/flash modules, energy packs, and software feature upgrades in an ultra-flexible offerings structure.

These products are optimized to deliver the performance that is demanded by the ever-growing I/O requirements of today’s enterprises. While M5110 comes as a small form factor PCIe adapter, M5110e comes integrated with the System x3650 M4 and x3750 M4 (8722) servers. These adapters also share a common set of upgrades, simplifying inventory management.

Figure 1. ServeRAID M5110 SAS/SATA Controller (with optional cache installed)

Did you know?

The ServeRAID M5110 and M5110e SAS/SATA controllers are optimized for high-performance, internal data storage with integration of the dual-core chip architecture, DDR3 1333 MHz cache memory, and PCIe 3.0 host interface. A portfolio of building blocks allows clients to design around a bottom-up approach and caters to a wide array of storage requirements. Upgrade features, such as support for RAID 6/60, performance optimization, and caching with SSDs, no longer require a hardware key. They are implemented through Features-on-Demand (FoD) software licenses.

Part number information

Table 1 provides the ordering part numbers and feature codes.

Table 1. Ordering part numbers and feature codes

* One M5100 Series FoD upgrade activates the feature on all M5200 Series and M5100 Series controllers that are installed in the server. The M5100 Series Zero Cache/RAID 5 Upgrade also activates the equivalent upgrades for M1100 and M1200 Series controllers.

The ServeRAID M5110 option part number includes the following items:

• One ServeRAID M5110 adapter card
• Full-height (3U) bracket
• Low-profile (2U) bracket
• Warranty Flyer
• ServeRAID M Documentation CD
• Important Notices Flyer

The ServeRAID M5100 Series 512MB Cache Upgrade option part number includes the following items:

• Cache module
• Important Notices Flyer
• Warranty Flyer
• ServeRAID M Documentation CD

The ServeRAID M5100 Series Battery Kit option part number includes the following items:

• Battery
• Two battery cables (0.5 m and 0.95 m)
• Important Notices Flyer
• Lithium Battery Handling Statement
• Warranty Flyer
• ServeRAID M Documentation CD

ServeRAID M5100 Series 512MB, 1GB, and 2GB Flash Upgrade option part numbers include the following items:

• Cache module
• Flash power module
• Two power module cables
• Important Notices Flyer
• Warranty Flyer
• ServeRAID M Documentation CD

ServeRAID M5100 Series Zero Cache/RAID 5 Upgrade, RAID 6 Upgrade, SSD Performance Accelerator, and SSD Caching Enabler option part numbers include the following items:

• M5100 Series upgrade authorization letter
• Feature Activation Instructions

Figure 2 shows the flash-backed cache module, power module, and power cable.

Figure 2. Flash-backed cache module, power module, and power cable

Features

The ServeRAID M5110 and M5110e SAS/SATA controllers have the following standard features:

• Auto-resume on array rebuild or array reconstruction after the loss of system power

  Auto-resume uses non-volatile RAM (NVRAM) to save the rebuild progress during a host reboot or power failure to automatically resume from the last checkpoint. Auto-resume ensures that data integrity is maintained throughout the process. The card supports a number of features that are able to be implemented without rebooting the server. Applications, such as email and web server, benefit from avoiding downtime during the transition.

• Online Capacity Expansion

  Online Capacity Expansion (OCE) allows the capacity of a virtual disk to be expanded by adding new physical disks or making use of unused space on existing disks, without requiring a reboot.

• Online RAID Level Migration

  Online RAID Level Migration, which is also known as logical drive migration, provides the ability to migrate a virtual disk from any RAID level to any other RAID level without requiring a reboot. System availability and application functionality remain unaffected.

• Fast initialization for quick array setup

  Fast initialization quickly writes zeros to the first and last sectors of the virtual drive. This feature allows you to immediately start writing data to the virtual drive while the initialization is running in the background.

• Consistency check for background data integrity

  Consistency check verifies that all stripes in a virtual disk with a redundant RAID level are consistent. The consistency check will mirror data when an inconsistent stripe is detected for a RAID 1 and recreate the parity from the peer disks in the case of a RAID 5 or RAID 6. Consistency checks can be scheduled to take place periodically.

• Extensive online configuration options and advanced monitoring and event notification

  Management tools provide convenience for the configuration of logical volumes and alerting when errors have occurred or are about to occur.

• Patrol read for media scanning and repairing

  Patrol read is a background sentry service designed to pro-actively discover and correct media defects (bad sectors) that arise normally as a disk drive ages. The service issues a series of verify commands, and if a bad block is discovered, the card’s firmware uses RAID algorithms to recreate the missing data and remap the sector to a good sector. The task is interruptible based on controller activity and host operations. The firmware also provides an interface where the patrol read task can be initiated, set up for continuous operation, and terminated from a management application. Patrol read can be activated by a manual command or automatically.

• Global and dedicated hot spare with revertible hot spare support

  A hot spare rebuilds data from all virtual disks within the disk group in which it is configured. ServeRAID provides the ability to define a physical disk as a hot spare to replace a failed drive. Hot spares can be configured as either global or dedicated. A global hot spare allows any physical drive to be designated as a hot spare. A dedicated hot spare allows the user to assign a hot spare drive to a particular array of the same drive type.

• Single controller multipathing (failover) I/O load balancing

  The ServeRAID’s firmware detects and uses multiple paths from the controllers to the SAS drives that are in enclosures. With redundant paths to the same port of a device, if one path fails, another path can be used to communicate between the controller and the drive. Using multiple paths with load balancing, instead of a single path, can increase reliability through redundancy.

• WebBIOS configuration utility for pre-boot array configuration and management

  WebBIOS is a utility that is built into the ServeRAID controller that allows you to configure drive groups and logical drives before installing or booting the operating system.

• MegaRAID Storage Manager management software

  MegaRAID Storage Manager is an easy-to-use advanced RAID management application that is used across the entire family of ServeRAID M controllers. It allows you to configure, monitor, and maintain drive groups, virtual drives, and advanced features with an intuitive GUI, reducing administrative efforts and simplifying troubleshooting.

Note: RAID 10, 50 and 60 drive groups do not support Online Capacity Expansion and Online RAID Level Migration. RAID 0, 1, 5, and 6 drive groups do not support Online Capacity Expansion and Online RAID Level Migration if two or more virtual drives are defined on a single drive group.

The following features are optional and require the respective upgrade to be purchased:

• Support for RAID levels 6 and 60 with M5100 Series RAID 6 Upgrade (81Y4546).

  This is a Features on Demand upgrade and only one upgrade is needed per server; all M5200 and M5100 series adapters installed in the server will have this upgrade enabled automatically.

• MegaRAID SafeStore support for self-encrypting drive (SED) services

  MegaRAID SafeStore encryption services offer instant secure erase and local key management for self-encrypting drives. This technology represents a significant step forward in securing data on a disk drive from any unauthorized access or modification resulting from theft, loss, or repurposing of drives. Instant secure erase permanently removes data when repurposing or decommissioning SEDs. SafeStore local key management provides the necessary management and protection of SEDs using a simple pass phrase, security key identifier, and security key file that can be set and applied to all SEDs assigned to a ServeRAID adapter. This feature removes the complexity of managing each SED’s unique encryption key, and it essentially relieves the administrator of most of the daily tasks of securing data. The SafeStore is part of any RAID 5 upgrade that is available: 81Y4544, 81Y4484, 81Y4487, 81Y4559, or 47C8670.

• MegaRAID flash cache protection

  MegaRAID flash cache protection uses NAND flash memory powered by a supercapacitor to protect data stored in the controller cache. This module eliminates the need for a lithium-ion battery commonly used to protect DRAM cache memory on PCI RAID controllers. To avoid the possibility of data loss or corruption during a power or server failure, flash cache protection technology transfers the contents of the DRAM cache to NAND flash using power from the flash power module. After the power is restored to the RAID controller, flash cache protection technology transfers the contents of the NAND flash back to the DRAM, which will eventually be flushed to disk.

• MegaRAID FastPath SSD performance acceleration

  MegaRAID FastPath software provides high-performance I/O acceleration for SSD-based virtual drives by exploiting an extremely low latency I/O path to increase the maximum I/O per second (IOPS) capability of the controller. This feature boosts the performance of applications with a highly random data storage access pattern, such as transactional databases.

  The feature is activated by enabling M5100 Series Performance Accelerator (90Y4273). This is a Features on Demand upgrade and only one upgrade is needed per server; all M5100 and M5200 series adapters installed in the server will have this upgrade enabled automatically.

• MegaRAID CacheCade SSD caching for traditional hard drives

  MegaRAID CacheCade read/write software is designed to accelerate the performance of hard disk drive (HDD) arrays with only an incremental investment in solid-state drive (SSD) technology. The software enables SSDs to be configured as a dedicated pool of controller cache to help maximize the I/O performance for transaction-intensive applications, such as databases and web serving. CacheCade software tracks data storage access patterns and identifies the most frequently accessed data. The hot data is then automatically stored on the solid-state storage devices that are assigned as a dedicated cache pool on a ServeRAID controller with the M5100 Series SSD Caching feature (90Y4318) enabled.

  CacheCade is a Features on Demand upgrade and only one upgrade is needed per server; all M5100 and M5200 series adapters installed in the server will have this upgrade enabled automatically.

Note: Not all SSDs support the CacheCade feature. For details, refer to the following web page:
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/MIGR-5094754

Technical specifications

The ServeRAID M5110 and M5110e SAS/SATA controllers have the following specifications:

• PCI Low Profile, Half-length – MD2 form factor (M5110) or onboard chip (M5110e)
• Eight internal 6 Gbps SAS/SATA ports
• Two internal Mini-SAS connectors (SFF-8087)
• 6 Gbps throughput per port
• 800 MHz dual-core IBM PowerPC® processor with LSI SAS2208 6 Gbps RAID on Chip (ROC) controller
• PCI Express 3.0 x8 host interface
• Support for RAID levels 0, 1, 10 standard; support for RAID 5, 50 and 6, 60 with optional upgrades
• Optional onboard data cache (DDR3 running at 1333 MHz) with the choice of:
  • 512 MB with optional battery backup
  • 512 MB, 1 GB, or 2 GB with flash backup (MegaRAID flash cache protection technology)
• Support for SAS and SATA HDDs and SSDs
• Support for intermixing SAS and SATA HDDs and SSDs; mixing different types of drives in the same array (drive group) not recommended
• Connections to up to 32 internal drives, depending on the server model
• Optional support for self-encrypting drives (SEDs) with MegaRAID SafeStore
• Optional support for SSD performance acceleration with MegaRAID FastPath and SSD caching with MegaRAID CacheCade
• Support for up to 64 virtual drives, up to 128 drive groups, up to 16 virtual drives per one drive group, and up to 32 physical drives per one drive group
• Support for logical unit number (LUN) sizes up to 64 TB
• Support for Integrated MegaRAID (iMR) mode (no cache memory upgrades installed) or MegaRAID (MR) mode (requires 512 MB, 1 GB, or 2 GB cache memory upgrade)
  • iMR mode (no cache memory upgrades installed) supports:
    • RAID 0, 1, and 10, and, optionally, 5 and 50
    • Fixed stripe unit size of 64 KB
    • Self-encrypting drives with optional Zero Cache/RAID 5 FoD upgrade
    • Both RAID and JBOD (pass-thru mode with system drives) configurations
      • Up to 16 drives are supported in a RAID configuration.
      • Up to 63 drives are supported in a JBOD configuration. (JBOD drives can be used as bootable drives.)
  • MR mode (512 MB, 1 GB, or 2 GB cache memory upgrade required) supports:
    • RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, and 50 and, optionally, 6 and 60 (Non-RAID is not supported.)
    • Configurable stripe unit size from 64 KB up to 1 MB
    • Self-encrypting drives
    • Optional SSD performance features (FastPath and CacheCade)
• Compliant with Disk Data Format (DDF) configuration on disk (COD)
• S.M.A.R.T. support
• MegaRAID Storage Manager management software