FibreMaster™ F12 Fibre Channel-to-Fibre Channel RAID series are intelligent and innovative storage subsystems for mission critical and high bandwidth applications. Purpose-built for high volume, fail-safe data storage applications, the FibreMaster F12 RAID combines unprecedented dependability with extreme scalability and superior performance.

Delivering unprecedented performance and reliability, the scalable FibreMaster F12 RAID integrates a highly acclaimed 2Gb Fibre-to-Fibre RAID controller with a wide range of 12 hot-swappable, high-performance, industry-standard 2Gb Fibre Channel disk drives in a single, uniquely designed, highly accessible 2U storage enclosure that is able to endure the extreme physical stresses placed on storage subsystems today.

Featuring two 2Gb Fibre Channel host channels, the embedded Fibre Channel RAID controller ensures superior performance, extreme reliability and exceptional data availability in today's most data-intensive storage environments. Two 2Gb Fibre Channel host channels guarantee high levels of data availability and security. Two additional 2Gb Fibre Channel expansion channels provide scalability options enabling users to increase the overall capacity of the storage network.

The FibreMaster F12 features an optional RAID Cache battery backup module with two Lithium-Ion battery cells. This optional battery backup module can sustain 1GB of cached data for up to 72 hours. Equipped with three fully redundant, hot-swappable cooling fan modules and two fully redundant, hot-swappable 350 Watt power supply units, the uniquely designed 2U 19" rack mountable enclosure has been customized to perform in the most rigorous storage environments where data availability is an imperative.

Running on a Fibre Channel architecture trusted by the most demanding applications, the FibreMaster F12 RAID is capable of high levels of performance. Its 64-bit separate-bus backbone is built around dedicated XOR engines running at twice the data bus speed. The calculation of parity and distribution of data can be optimized with the free association between individual logical arrays and different optimization modes.

Featuring a 64-bit 133MHz memory bus, the unparalleled bandwidth makes the FibreMaster F12 RAID's high data throughput more than sufficient for small-to-medium sized servers or workstations. Data can be distributed at the burst rate of up to 1066MB/second. The dual independent PCI bus design virtually eliminates all imminent bottlenecks on IO traffic, providing sufficient throughput for a wide range of applications on Fibre-based PCs, single-user workstations, NT, Linux, or Unix-based servers. These applications include disk-to-disk backup, Video on Demand, CCTV, and stream editing.

Capacity is made available in a SAN through LUN filtering, a centralized access management capability. Up to 1,024 filtering entries are supported and multiple entries can be mapped to each logical partition of logical configurations. Various related functions, such as host port auto-identification, filter type selection, entry naming, and access mode configuration make shared storage an easier task.

Media Scan is an innovative Intelligent Drive Handling function that can be used for data retrieval from degraded or damaged hard drives. If two bad blocks occur on two member drives of an array, the integrity of the stored data will be endangered. Intelligent Drive Handling capabilities can be used to retrieve data from the damaged sectors. Media Scan is able to handle low quality drives in both degraded mode and during the rebuild process. Other Intelligent Drive Handling features, which provide further data security, include the transparent resetting of hung hard drives, power-failure management, and bad drive handling during Logical Disk expansion.

The Java-based GUI manager provides easy-to-use interfaces, is rich in configuration options, and allows users to remotely manage their storage system over a network. Event monitor and notification processing center submodules provide system managers the freedom of real-time monitoring with a variety of notification methods.