HighPoint Technologies RocketRAID 3510

Introduction

After looking at HighPoint's RocketRAID 3120, we received the more powerful RocketRAID 3510 (RR3510). The RR3510 features an 800MHz Intel IOP341 RAID I/O Processor, supporting RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, and JBOD. The RR3510 also doubles the amount of onboard DDR2 ECC RAM that the RR3120 had, with 256MB.

The minimum number of drives for RAID level 5 is three drives, and four drives are required for RAID level 6. That said, the RR3510 has a single mini-SAS connector that supports four SATA 3Gbps channels. With the additional SATA channels, the RR3510 utilizes a PCI-Express x8 connection for additional bandwidth. I'll be testing the RocketRAID 3510 using CentOS-5 with Linux kernel 2.6.25, in which HighPoint's GPL-licensed driver now resides.

Packaging & Appearance

The RR3510 came to us in a white box, with items listed on the box. The front has a picture of the card itself, as well as a short description and five of the card's features. The packaging is very similar to that of the RocketRAID 3120.

The back of the box lists all the features of the card. Again, very similar to the back of the RR3120.

A cardboard box inside of the white box holds the card, manual, mini-SAS breakout cable, and driver CD. The card is wrapped in an anti-static bag and everything is protected by two pieces of foam fitted for the box.

The card itself can be installed as either full-profile or low-profile. HighPoint includes a PCI bracket for either method. I'll be using a full-sized case, so I have no need for the low-profile bracket.

A few of the distinguishing features of the RR3510 are the heatsink on the Intel RAID processor, as well as the use of a mini-SAS port rather than individual SATA ports. This saves space, as well as aids in cable management. Also of note is the PCI-Express x8 interface.