Specifications
Adapter Family
Adaptec SmartRAID 3100 series — 12G SAS/SATA RAID adapters on PCIe Gen 3
Representative Models
SmartRAID 3154-16i (16 internal ports) and SmartRAID 3152-8i (8 internal ports)
Host Interface
x8 PCIe Gen 3
Media Interface
12G SAS and 6G SATA
Ports
16 internal SAS/SATA ports on the 3154-16i; 8-port and external variants across the family
Form Factor
Low-profile MD2
Maximum Media Bandwidth
12 Gb/s read/write per port
Performance
Up to 1.7 million IOPS when paired with 12 Gb/s SSDs
RAID Levels
0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60 and JBOD
Cache Protection
Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection (ZMCP) option — no battery to service
Sibling Family
SmartHBA 2200 — entry RAID / HBA adapters sharing the same Smart Storage stack
Successor Family
SmartRAID 3200 (24G SAS, PCIe Gen 4) for new NVMe-based designs
Management
maxView Storage Manager GUI, ARCCONF command-line and UEFI/HII pre-boot configuration
Fleet Standardisation
Identical drivers, firmware generation and tooling across SmartRAID 3100, SmartRAID 3200 and SmartHBA 2200
Overview
The Adaptec SmartRAID 3100 series is the 12G SAS generation of Microchip's RAID line, and remains the cost-optimised choice for servers built around 12 Gb/s SAS SSDs and SAS/SATA hard drives. The 3154-16i puts 16 internal ports on a single x8 PCIe Gen 3 low-profile MD2 card, which is the standard 1U and 2U drive-bay topology.
With 12 Gb/s SSDs the series reaches up to 1.7 million IOPS, which is sufficient for the vast majority of mainstream database, virtualisation and file-serving workloads. Cache-backed RAID with the optional Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection module removes the battery — and its replacement cycle — from the RAID cache path.
The operational advantage of the 3100 is its software: it shares the hardened Adaptec Smart Storage stack, drivers and management tooling with the 24G SmartRAID 3200 and the SmartHBA 2200. A fleet that mixes 12G and 24G adapters can be qualified, monitored and updated as one family rather than three.
Key Benefits
16 internal ports on a single low-profile MD2 card, up to 1.7 million IOPS with 12 Gb/s SSDs, and ZMCP battery-free cache protection. The unified Smart Storage stack means one driver, one firmware generation and one set of tools across the 3100, 3200 and SmartHBA families.
Applications
Mainstream 1U/2U servers, virtualisation datastores, database and file-serving RAID arrays, SAS HDD capacity pools, edge and branch storage nodes, and cost-sensitive storage systems built on 12 Gb/s SAS infrastructure.
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