Lenovo 7Y37A01083, 4Y37A16226 User Manual

Lenovo ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i Internal RAID
Adapters

Product Guide

The ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i family is a 12 Gb SAS/SATA internal RAID adapter that offers a cost­effective RAID solution for small to medium business customers. The 730-8i is available either as a 1GB
cache adapter without flash backup, or a 2GB cache adapter with flash backup. The adapters support
RAID levels 0, 1, 10, 5, and 50 (the 2GB adapter also supports 6 and 60), and include an extensive list of
RAS and management features.

The ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i 1GB Cache adapter is shown in the following figure.

Figure 1. ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i 1GB Cache PCIe 12Gb Adapter

Did you know?

RAID on Chip-based controllers such as the RAID 730-8i adapters have a dedicated processor that
offloads RAID functions from the server's CPU. With hardware acceleration for RAID operations plus
dedicated cache memory, the 730-8i is a cost-effective storage solution for ThinkSystem servers.

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Lenovo ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i Internal RAID Adapters 1

Part number information

The following table provides the ordering part numbers for the adapters.

Product availability: The ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i 1GB Cache adapter is available world-wide,
except for USA and Canada. Other adapters are available world-wide.

Table 1. Part numbers and feature codes

Part number Feature code Description

7Y37A01083 AUNH ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i 1GB Cache PCIe 12Gb Adapter

4Y37A16226 B5MQ ThinkSystem SR670 RAID 730-8i 1GB Cache Adapter

4Y37A09722 B4RQ ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i 2GB Flash PCIe 12Gb Adapter

The following figure shows the ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i 2GB Flash PCIe 12Gb Adapter with the included
external power module.

Figure 2. ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i 2GB Flash PCIe 12Gb Adapter

Technical specifications

The ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i Adapter family has the following specifications:

PCIe 3.0 x8 host interface

12 Gbps SAS/SATA RAID controller

Cache options (neither are ugradable):

730-8i 1GB Cache adapter: 1GB cache without flash-based backup
730-8i 2GB Flash adapter: 2GB cache with flash-based backup

Flash backup (2GB Flash adapter only):

MegaRAID flash cache protection with NAND flash memory
Powered by an externally mounted CacheVault Power Module supercapacitor

Connectivity for up to 8 internal SAS or SATA drives

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Support for intermixing SAS and SATA HDDs and SSDs. Mixing SAS and SATA drives in the same
array is not supported. Mixing of HDDs and SSDs in the same array is not supported.

Support for intermixing of 12 Gbps and 6 Gbps drives.

RAID levels supported:

730-8i 1GB Cache adapter: RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, and 50
730-8i 2GB Flash adapter: RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, 50, 6, and 60

Support for JBOD (non-RAID) drive state

Support for up to 64 virtual disks, up to 128 arrays, up to 16 virtual disks per array

Support for logical drive sizes greater than 2 TB.

Configurable stripe size from 64 KB up to 1 MB

Supports 512e, 512n and 4K sector formatted drives

Support for SafeStore for self-encrypting drives (SEDs) (2GB Flash adapter only)

Compliant with Disk Data Format (DDF) configuration on disk (CoD).

S.M.A.R.T. support.

Configuration through

XClarity Provisioning Manager UEFI interface
XClarity Controller web interface
XClarity Administrator Configuration Patterns
StorCLI command-line interface
LSI Storage Authority (LSA) GUI interface
UEFI Human Interface Infrastructure (HII)

Note: CacheCade is not supported by these adapters

The following table lists the specifications of the RAID 730-8i adapters.

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Table 2. Specifications

Feature RAID 730-8i 1GB RAID 730-8i 2GB

Part number 7Y37A01083

4Y37A16226

4Y37A09722

Form factor PCIe low profile PCIe low profile

Controller chip LSI SAS3108 LSI SAS3108

Broadcom equivalent MegaRAID 9361-8i MegaRAID 9361-8i

Host interface PCIe 3.0 x8 PCIe 3.0 x8

Port interface 12 Gb SAS 12 Gb SAS

Number of ports 8 8

Port connectors 2x Mini-SAS HD x4 (SFF-8643) 2x Mini-SAS HD x4 (SFF-8643)

Drive interface SAS, SATA SAS, SATA

Drive type HDD, SSD HDD, SSD, SED

Hot-swap drives Yes Yes

Max devices 8 8

RAID levels 0, 1, 10, 5, 50 0, 1, 10, 5, 50, 6, 60

JBOD mode Yes Yes

Cache 1GB (Standard) 2GB (Standard)

CacheVault cache protection with Flash No Yes

Performance Accelerator (FastPath) No Yes

SSD Caching (CacheCade Pro 2.0) No No

SED support (SafeStore) No Yes

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Features

The ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i adapter has the following standard features:

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. You
can 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.

Drive roaming

Drive roaming occurs when the physical disks are changed to different ports on the same
controller. When the drives are placed on different channels, the controller detects the RAID
configuration from the configuration data on the drives.

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 can 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 (RLM), which is also known as logical drive migration, can 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 mirrors data when an inconsistent stripe is detected for RAID 1
and re-creates the parity from the peer disks for 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.

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