Designed to reportedly replace a current generation of Lithium Ion battery-based cache back-up devices, the Adaptec RAID Series 5Z is an integrated solid state solution that significantly reduces annual data center operating costs and environmental impact. The vendor say the controllers offer an integrated, maintenance-free design, eliminating the need to monitor battery charge levels or shut down servers for battery replacement.

"As enterprise storage demands skyrocket, we see an enormous need for feature-rich, maintenance-free data storage I/O solutions that work to lower overall IT costs and provide significant environmental advantages," said Scott Cleland, Director of Marketing, Adaptsec. "For both SATA and SAS drives, the Adaptec Series 5Z family not only delivers the performance, scalability and power efficiency that our customers demand, but with Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection, it offers a simple, maintenance-free solution that provides a critical layer of data protection that is often overlooked."

Built on the Adaptec RAID Series 5 high-performance architecture, the Adaptec Series 5Z family claims to offers an innovative approach to protecting at-risk data held in controller cache and addressing common battery back-up deficiencies. Since the quickest way for a RAID controller to fulfill a read or write request is to serve data out of its cache, enabling and protecting the RAID controller cache reportedly offers significant performance benefits while also safeguarding against the loss of cached data during a power or system failure.

With approximately 1 TB of data residing in cache for every 3,000 servers, back-up solution is invaluable in case of a system power failure. Adaptec says the Series 5Z's Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection protects data stored in controller cache for up to 10 years with no installation, monitoring, maintenance, disposal or replacement costs. Unlike Lithium Ion batteries, Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection protects cached data immediately, instead of hours after battery conditioning, providing instant protection and immediate optimized RAID performance.