Putting Serial Attached SCSI To Work For End Users

Finally, the most pervasive enterprise technology has come to a crossroads. Parallel SCSI is the heart of the datacenter, used as the standard interconnect and hard drive communication scheme for server and storage environments. Companies had been developing and utilizing SCSI for over 20 years as the mainstay for enterprise storage.

But the technology's future was coming into question. Quite simply, the parallel interface would have to be overhauled to address next generation concerns of signal integrity, performance and reliability, right down to fundamentals like cable length.

The result of three years of industry discussions and technological investigation is Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), the next standard in enterprise server and storage technology. SAS is a high-performance solution that leverages proven SCSI functionality, and builds on the enterprise expertise of multiple chip, board, drive, subsystem, and server manufacturers throughout the industry. It provides better performance and flexibility than the serial technology, Fibre Channel, at a lower cost and with the same, or ever better, reliability.

Key SAS Features Include:

• SAS and SATA drive support providing an unprecedented level of choice in the enterprise — the flexibility of integrating either SAS and/or SATA devices in common server or storage solutions, providing customization to meet cost or performance needs in unique business environments
• reliable point-to-point connections at 3Gb/s — up to 128 devices (or 16,256 addressable devices per port)
• full dual-ported connections for performance or failover capabilities, delivering robust data protection and reliability right to the hard drive
• enterprise features including native command queuing and greater than 2TB LUN support
• available in multiple hot-swappable disk drive performance and form factor configurations including high value 3.5" 10k rpm drives, high performance 3.5" 15k rpm drives and emerging 2.5" high density drives for performance server and specialized high-performance storage applications
• thinner cabling than SCSI and ATA which delivers new cooling metrics and more efficient airflow — critical in a dense computing environment where low profile servers are racked and stacked with multiple external storage chassis. Effective heat management and cooling schemes remain a top priority for IT managers today delivering enhanced uptime and reliability guarantees in application sensitive environments.