SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Gigabyte is releasing a server to get around hardware and software limitations that bottleneck the redundant array of independent disks (RAID) when used with Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVme) solid-state drives (SSDs).
Continuing with its R282 series, the product, Gigabyte R282-Z9G, was designed to house an all-in-one server solution that specifically targets high-performance NVMe SSD drives for RAID, by incorporating the SupremeRAID solution by GRAID.
GRAID for RAID
More companies are using flash storage and doing so on a larger scale. However, there are pitfalls when using software or hardware RAID, such as limitations in computing performance or consuming a large amount of CPU resources.
To solve these problems and to do so with a large number of drives, the GRAID SupremeRAID solution works by installing a virtual NVMe controller on the OS, while integrating a PCIe device for high performance.
Server features
With this solution, over 100GB/s of throughput is possible for workloads in HPC, 4K/8K video editing, high-frequency trading (HFT), online transaction processing (OLTP), or database processing.
The R282-Z9G comes with the GRAID card installed and has shown optimal performance, with up to 20 x Kioxia CM6 drives. The server supports dual AMD EPYC 7003 processors up to 64 cores and a max TDP of 240 W. Given the dual socket design, there are 32 DIMM slots available for 2 DIMMs per channel for the 8-channel memory configuration.
To support 20 x Gen4 U.2 drives in the front for RAID, PCIe slots are populated with riser cards and the OCP mezzanine slots as well, leaving a PCIe 4.0 x16 FHHL slot available for high-speed networking. At the rear of the case are an additional 2 x 2.5″ SATA SSD bays. On the rear of the case are USB 3.0 ports, VGA port for local management, and a pair of 1GbE LAN ports. The system is powered by redundant 1600 W power supplies.
