The HPE Smart Array P421 Controller is a low profile, 6Gb/s, PCIe 3.0, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) RAID controller that provides enterprise class, storage performance, maximum external scalability, and data protection for select HPE ProLiant Gen8 rack servers and tower servers. It features eight external SAS ports and delivers increased server uptime by providing advanced storage functionality, including online RAID level migration (between any RAID levels) with flash back write cache, global online spare, and pre-failure warning. Data Compatibility among all models of Smart Array controllers allows simple and easy migration at any time when needs for higher performance, capacity, and availability increase. Even new generations of Smart Array controllers can understand the data format of previous generations of Smart Array controllers.

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Dimensions	Low Profile PCIe Form Factor 19.05 cm x 24.13 cm x 5.72 cm (7.5 in x 9.5 in x 2.25 in)
Disk Drive and Enclosure Protocol Support	6Gb/s SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) 6Gb/s SATA (Serial AT Attachment)
SAS Connectors	2 external (Mini SAS) x8 wide port connectors
SAS Port Link Rate	6Gb/s per physical link
PCIe Link Rate	PCIe3 x8
Cache Memory	DDR3-1333 MHz, 72-bit wide bus at 10.6GB/s
Logical Drives Supported	Up to 64 logical drives
Memory Addressing	64-bit, supporting servers with memory space greater than 4 GiB (4.4 GB)
RAID Support	RAID 6, 60 (Advanced Data Guarding) RAID 5, 50 (Distributed Data Guarding) RAID 1, 10 (Drive Mirroring) RAID 1 ADM, 10 ADM (Advanced Data Mirroring) RAID 0 (Striping)
Upgradeable Firmware	Upgradeable Firmware with recovery ROM feature