| Serial Attached SCSI
(SAS) news |
Adaptec Ships Flash Cache
Backup for SAS RAID Controllers
Editor:- June 24, 2009 - Adaptec today
announced the availability of
flash
backup options for its SATA/SAS
RAID controllers.
Adaptec'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 batteries.
Editor's comments:-
the industry's 1st flash cache backup module for RAID controllers was
announced in February
2009 by Viking
Modular Solutions.
What are the Prospects for SAS SSDs?
Editor:- May
12, 2009 - how popular is SAS compared to other interfaces when it comes to
reader searches for SSDs?
Form factor remains the #1 search criterion
for SSDs, ever since we started tracking SSD user preferences
5 years ago. That's
hardly surprising - because if the product doesn't conveniently fit into the
space planned for it - then a major rethink is required. And interface type is
the next main consideration - for similar reasons.
Only 6% of
SSD oems market
SAS compatible SSDs.
That's much less than I would have expected a few years ago.
Part of
the reason may be that the enterprise market is still
confused and
unsure about whether the best way to tackle locally connected SSDs is as small
form factor disks (2.5"
and
3.5"), or
PCIe compatible cards
or rackmounts.
Add in the recession factor - and you can see why most SSD product
marketers have been playing it safe - and not rushing to offer SAS SSD
product lines.
I looked at storage search volumes in April 2009 -
which revealed the following.
In searches for SSDs by interface type -
SAS was already 10% higher than searches for
FC compatible SSDs.
SATA SSDs
accounted for just over 2x as many searches as SAS SSDs. That understates the
volume and popularity of SATA SSDs - but the discrepancy is explained by the
fact that once a reader has found the directory for small form factor SSDs -
most of the products they see already match their needs and have a SATA or PATA
interface. It's only at the high end of the performance range for SFF SSDs that
readers realize it's more productive to search by interface.
The real
excitement in the enterprise SSD market though is being caused by the PCIe
mavericks who collectively have made searches for PCIe SSDs 7x more
popular than SAS SSDs. Users and system designers seem to be buying into the
concept of ripping up their old ideas of what package a storage module should
come in - for the extra benefit of getting faster performance.
Overall
this suggests that SSDs will not follow the same interface adoption patterns
set by hard drives.
Users will choose whatever SSD technology gives them the best tactical options
for each type of application - rather than follow a single pattern.
LSI Acquires 3ware RAID Adapter Line
Editor:- April
6, 2009 - LSI
today
announced
that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the assets and certain
associated intellectual property of the 3ware
RAID adapter business
of AMCC for
approximately $20 million in cash.
Editor's comments:- There are
nearly 500 storage
acquisitions and mergers listed on StorageSearch.com.
Here are some others, previously acquired by LSI.
- Agere Systems (merger) - storage controllers / adapters
- AMI's RAID business
- Infineon's HDD Chip Business
- IntraServer Technology - SCSI & Ethernet HBAs
- Mylex - RAID adapters
- SiliconStor - SATA chips
- StoreAge - SAN systems
SSD Bookmarks from Solid Access Technologies
Editor:-
April 2, 2009 - Solid
Access Technologies' President, Tomas Havrda - shares his SSD
Bookmarks today on the home page of
StorageSearch.com.
This
is a company whose revenue grew 400% in 2008 and whose customers
include Samsung Securities. So you may be surprised what Tomas Havrda has to
say on the subject of flash SSDs for enterprise acceleration. He's not convinced
it's a good idea.
Pliant Technology Announces Another $15 million Funding
Editor:-
March 30, 2009 - Pliant
Technology announced it has received
$15 million in
Series C funding.
This will be used as working capital to support
volume production of its SAS
compatible flash SSDs.
ATTO Ships 16 Port 6Gb/s SAS PCIe Adapters
Amherst, NY - February 18,
2009 - ATTO Technology, Inc. today announced availability of its
first 16-port 6Gb/s SAS PCIe Host Adapters - the ExpressSAS H60F.
Throughput
is up to 600MB/s per port. OS compatibility includes Windows, Mac and Linux
environments. ...ATTO
Technology profile, SAS
Storage
New Directory - SAS SSDs
Editor:- January 26, 2009
- StorageSearch.com today
published a new article and directory on the subject of
SAS SSDs.
This
market has been a long time acoming - and for many years there were only 1 or 2
vendors in the market. The new article chronicles the genesis of
SAS SSDs and lists
known vendors - which will head into double digits this year.
Toshiba Announces Groundbreaking 2.5" SAS SSDs
IRVINE,
Calif. - January 8, 2009 - Toshiba announced it will start volume
production of dual port SAS interface SLC flash SSDs in Q2 2009.
The
2.5" SSDs will
have 100GB capacity, and 25,000 read IOPS, and 20,000 write IOPS. ...Toshiba profile
Editor's
comments:- One of the enabling factors for the high write IOPS is the use
of a non-volatile cache - which was predicted in StorageSearch.com's article
- the Flash SSD
Performance Roadmap.
This brings the number of oems who have
announced SAS SSDs
to 6. See SSD
Buyers Guide table for the full list. We'll publish a dedicated SAS SSD
guide later this month.
StoneFly Lowers Cost of SAS IP SANs
Hayward,
Calif. - December 10, 2008 - StoneFly, Inc. is now offering
high-capacity SAS expansion for its S-Class model IP SANs.
This
lowers the cost of expansion significantly: from $1.00 per GB previously, to
$.80 per GB currently. In addition, customers can now increase expansion to up
to 72 additional disks on some S-Class models. Another change announced today
for the ISC line is that it now comes standard with 6 Gigabit Ethernet ports, or
can be upgraded to support dual 10GbE connections. ...StoneFly profile
Intel and Hitachi GST Announce Plans for SAS flash SSDs
SAN
JOSE , Calif - December 2, 2008 - Intel Corp and Hitachi GST
today announced plans to jointly develop and deliver SAS and Fibre Channel high
IOPS enterprise-class flash SSDs.
The new SSDs, expected to ship in 2010 will be branded and
exclusively sold and supported by Hitachi GST and use Intel NAND flash memory
and SSD technology.
...Hitachi profile,
...Intel profile,
Fibre-Channel SSDs
Editor's
comments:- this marks Hitachi GST's entry in the
SSD market. If you can't
wait till 2010 for SAS SSDs - our
SSD Guide
lists RunCore,
Solid Access
Technologies and STEC
as current sources.
ATTO Ships Fastest SAS/SATA HBAs
Amherst, NY -
November 13, 2008 - ATTO Technology, Inc. announces shipment of its
first 6Gbps SAS/SATA host adapters, to select OEMs and partners.
Leveraging
PCIe 2.0 and 6-Gb SAS speeds, ATTO says the
H608 (8 internal
ports) and H680 (8
external ports) deliver the fastest available connection to
SAS/SATA storage (up to
8GB/sec. full-duplex).
...ATTO Technology profile,
Record Breaking
Storage
Seagate Launches Greener 15K RPM HDDs
SCOTTS VALLEY,
Calif. - November 3, 2008 - Seagate today introduced the Savvio
15K.2 - a new 15K RPM 2.5" 6Gb/s SAS hard drive.
Shipping
next month, capacity options include 146GB and 73GB. Seagate claims up to
70% electrical power reduction compared with 3.5" hard drives. ...Seagate profile,
SAS Storage
LSI Announces 16 Port SAS I/O Processor
SNW, TX -
October 14, 2008 - LSI Corp today introduced a 16-port SAS storage
processor chip.
The new LSISAS2116 is the industry's first
single-chip, 16-port 6Gb/s
SAS storage
processor for external storage systems. It integrates a PowerPC application
processor, x8 PCIe 2.0 bus and support for 8GB of 800MHz DDR2 memory.
...LSI profile,
storage chips
Introducing RunCore SAS SSDs
Editor:- August 28, 2008 - RunCore
is a new name in the international SSD market which I only learned about today.
RunCore
says it aims to become "the leader in the field of solid-state storage."
Usually such statements are nonsense. But the company's SSDs are
already available in an impressive variety of form factors which start at 1.8"
and go all the way up to rackmount enterprise SSDs with SAS interfaces and
RAID protection. Its broad range of SSD interfaces also place it in the same
exclusive club as
BiTMICRO and
STEC.
Founded
in 2006, RunCore has extensive intellectual property based on 10 years of
research in the National University of Defense Technology in China. RunCore
says it's developing a bunch of high performance SSDs which will be available in
2009 - but the company is already shipping many products now. ...RunCore profile | |
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Serial Attached
SCSI - Delivering Flexibility to the Data Center - article by LSI Logic and
Maxtor
If you think you already know SAS because you
know SATA and traditional SCSI then think again.
Sometimes disruptive
technologies wear an unassuming disguise. In fiction, Clark Kent, Frodo Baggins
and Buffy Summers at first seem harmless, but we see them change into Superman,
the Ring Bearer and the Slayer.
SAS too comes cloaked in plain garb -
with a physical layer which looks a lot like SATA. But like the Incredible Hulk
there are muscles rippling under that shirt - and you would be wrong to dismiss
SAS so lightly. There's a lot more inside this interface than it says on the box
as this informative article reveals. ...read the article | |
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Serial Attached SCSI
SAS
technology enables SCSI interface solutions beyond Ultra320 to the
next-generation Direct Attach Storage enterprise server, storage systems, and
high-performance workstation markets while retaining device-level backward
compatibility. The SAS standard defines a device-level enterprise storage
interface incorporating SCSI command sets, serial point-to-point
interconnections, dual porting, increased addressability and the ability to
scale to small form factors. Because the SAS physical layer is compatible with
Serial ATA (SATA), users will have the choice of populating their systems with
SAS or SATA hard disk drives, or a combination of both.
...from a joint
press release by LSI Logic
and Tabernus | |
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| Serial
Attached SCSI Timeline |
STORAGEsearch.com was the
first publication to provide a dedicated
Serial Attached SCSI
page in November 2001, the same month in which the new standard was first
publicly announced.
The first functioning silicon for this was
demonstrated in January 2004 by LSI Logic. Host Bus Adapters and chipsets
supporting this new standard start shipping to storage system designers in
April/May 2004 from various companies.
Here's a timeline of how SAS
moved from vaporware to reality.
- November 2004 - Serial Attached SCSI moved into the
top 20 most popular subjects viewed by STORAGEsearch readers for the first time.
- February 2005 - IBM ships SAS in x366 servers
- May 2005 - Hitachi Ships 15K RPM SAS Hard Drives
- June 2005 - HP announces that SAS will be used in
ProLiant Dual-Core AMD Opteron-based servers
- September 2005 - LSI Logic discloses that Dell and
Sun will soon ship SAS based servers
- October 2005 - Seagate & Adaptec Launch 1/2
Price SAS Starter Kit
- December 2005 - Maxtor & LSI Logic Offer Rebate
to Early SAS Adopters
- January 2006 - StorCase ships first removable SAS
drive enclosures.
- July 2006 - SAS enters the top 10 storage searches
by
STORAGEsearch.com readers for the
first time.
- April 2007 - Hitachi
announces 15k RPM, 300GB SAS HDDs.
- April 2008 - Seagate
Technology starts volume shipments of 7,200 RPM SAS compatible terabyte
HDDs.
Why is the new standard necessary?
Without
faster storage - typically upto 50% of the potential performance in
modern server processors is wasted.
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)
provides a software compatible upgrade for directly attached SCSI storage which
provides much higher performance than Ultra320 SCSI. So this is the least pain
next step for SCSI users. Although, as with all new technology there is a
learning curve.
The popularity of Internet SCSI (iSCSI) protocol
products in the second half of 2003 proved that the base of server owners who
are familiar with SCSI - will go a long way to adopt new connectivity options
which leverage concepts they trust and are familiar with. Asimilar evolution
took place with Ethernet, which started as a 3Mbps standard and still looks
viable at 10Gbps. Computer users like stuff that is newer faster and cheaper,
but we all know that "newer" also means "buggier" if we are
the first users. Anything that reduces the amount of new code and risk along
the way gets our vote.
SAS will meet the threat (albeit late in
marketing terms) from Serial
ATA (SATA),
FireWire and
USB 2. In fact SAS uses the
same electrical interface and cables as SATA. That's good news if you're worried
about stocking even more types of cables. It also simplifies the rollout of new
test equipment - because
products designed for SATA can be adapted to SAS more simply (in theory by
firmware upgrades.)
20+ years ago, when SCSI started, it suited the
clock speeds and cable transmission driving capabilities of the TTL compatible
logic which was the standard at the time. SCSI was also easy to connect using
standard low technology ribbon cable. Since then, most of the enhancements in
the SCSI standard have focused on getting it to work faster, using higher clock
speeds, a wider data bus, lower logic levels and differential signals.
Serial
Attached SCSI is the first real attempt in SCSI history to lower cost and
simplify the physical connection. Past performance upgrades came from increasing
the number of cable cores. But the new high speed serial SCSI cables should be
cheaper than the lower performance parallel SCSI ones which they replace. And
you won't have to worry any more about those termination nightmares. It's
simpler in a serial system to automatically monitor signal quality and
dyamically adjust to the cable and connector transmission characteristics.
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