OVERVIEW

The HP Smart Array P420 Controller is a low profile, 6 Gb/s, PCIe 3.0, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) RAID controller that provides enterprise class, storage performance and data protection for select HP ProLiant Gen8 rack servers and tower servers. It features eight internal SAS ports and delivers increased server uptime by providing advanced storage functionality, including online RAID level migration (between any RAID levels) with flash back write cache, global online spare, and pre-failure warning. Data Compatibility among all models of Smart Array controllers allows simple and easy migration at any time when needs for higher performance, capacity, and availability increase. Even new generations of Smart Array controllers can understand the data format of previous generations of Smart Array controllers.

Key features

• The SA-P420 Controller supports up to 60 drives depending on the server implementation.
• Seamless upgrades from past generations and upgrades to next generation HP high performance and high capacity Serial Attached SCSI Smart Array controllers.
• 6Gb/s SAS technology delivers high performance and data bandwidth and contains full compatibility with 6Gb/s SATA technology.
• x8 PCIe 3.0 host interface technology delivers high performance and data bandwidth up to 8 GB/s maximum bandwidth.
• Modular, easy-to-upgrade design lets you optimize performance by upgrading from 40-bit 512MB cache to 72-bit 1GB Flash Backed Write Cache or 72-bit 2GB Flash Backed Write Cache (FBWC).
• Addition of the flash backed cache upgrade enables array expansion, logical drive extension, RAID migration, and stripe size migration.
• Standard on the P420 are RAID 6 ADG, RAID 60 ADG, RAID 1 ADM, Capacity Expansion, mirror split, recombine, and rollback in Online Mode, Drive Erase, Performance Optimization-Degraded Reads and Read Coalescing, Move/Delete any individual LUNS and Online Split Mirror
• The HP SSD Smart Path feature included in the Smart Array software stack improves SSD read for all RAID levels and RAID 0 write operations by optimizing the path to each SSD attached to the controller
• The HP SmartCache licensed feature (available as an additional option) is a controller-based read caching solution in a DAS environment that caches the most frequently accessed data ("hot" data) onto lower latency SSDs to dynamically accelerate application workloads.
• Mix-and-match SAS and SATA hard drives, lets you deploy drive technology as needed to fit your computing environment.
• Software consistency on most current shipping Smart Array products: HP Smart Storage Administrator, HP Systems Insight Manager (SIM), and Intelligent Provisioning.
• Low-profile PCI Express form factor - ships with a full size bracket for deployment in either a low-profile or full sized slot.

ITEM DETAIL SPECS

• 6Gb/s SAS [(600MB/s bandwidth per physical link)]
• x8 6Gb/s SAS physical links (compatible with 3Gb/s SATA )
• 512 MB 72-bit wide DDR3-800MHz Flash Backed Write Cache, 1 GB 72-bit wide DDR3-1333MHz Flash Backed Write Cache or 2GB 72-bit wide DDR3-1333MHz Flash Back Write Cache provides up to 10.6 GB/s maximum bandwidth (on the DDR3-1333MHz cache)
• x8 PCIe 3.0 host interface provides maximum bandwidth
• Read ahead caching
• Write-back caching (with FBWC)