If you're a regular reader of STA's Serial Storage Wire, you know that there's a transition taking place in the storage industry from FC-AL to Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) storage architectures and disk drives... NetApp is well into this technology transition, where SAS-connected disk shelves now account for a majority of storage shipped with new NetApp® systems.
SAS Library » 12Gb/s SAS
Articles
Contributed article to InterConnection World by Jay Neer, Molex
The initial release for Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) connectors and cables was a bit different from the typical release of a new I/O standard. The SCSI Trade Association (STA) was committed to enabling Serial ATA (SATA) connectivity with SAS, so close coordination was required between the two standards organizations to achieve this goal. The idea was to create one-way interconnectivity to permit SATA hard-disk drives (HDDs) to plug into SAS backplanes, while preventing the dual-port SAS HDDs from plugging into SATA backplanes.
Presentations
Presenters: Harry Mason, President, SCSI Trade Association
Marty Czekalski, Vice President, SCSI Trade Association
Where: Storage Networking World Fall 2011, Orlando, FL
When: October 12, 2011
In this presentation Mason and Czekalski present:
- Update on the SCSI Trade Association
- Range of SAS & SATA storage solutions
- SAS technology and market overview
- Key markets and sample deployments
- Extending SAS innovation
- 12Gb/s
- MultiLink SAS™
- Advanced Connectivity
Presenters: Harry Mason, President SCSI Trade Association, and Director of Industry Marketing at LSI, Corp.
Marty Czekalski, Vice President SCSI Trade Association, and Interface & Emerging Architecture
Program Manager at Seagate
Where: Storage Developers Conference, Santa Clara, CA
When: September 19, 2011
In this presentation Mason and Czekalski provide:
- SAS Overview
- SAS Performance Roadmap and 12Gb/s SAS staging
- MultiLink SAS™ and Advanced Connectivity
- SCSI over PCIe (SOP)
- Backplane Receptacle Compatibility
Extending SAS innovation:
- 12Gb/s SAS
- MultiLink SAS™
- Advanced Connectivity
Presenters from Molex: Galen Fromm, Senior Electrical Project Engineer, Jay Neer, Strategic Product Manager, and Edmund Poh, Senior Product Engineer
Where: Flash Memory Summit
When: August 9 - 11, 2011
Fromm, Near and Poh present a snapshot and status report on Serial Attached SCSI and the development of connectors for enterprise storage bays.
By: Harry Mason, President SCSI Trade Association, Director of Marketing, LSI
Where: FOSE Conference & Exhibition, Washington, DC
When: July 11 - 14, 2011
Mason presents an overview of the SCSI Trade Association, SAS technology and the market for SAS products and technology, including key markets, sample deployments and what SAS innovations will present in the future.
- Ultra320 SCSI gave way to 3Gb/s SAS (2005-06)
- 6Gb/s SAS was announced in 4Q08
- 6Gb/s SAS systems now shipping with full scale deployment expected 4Q09-1Q10.
- 6Gb/s SAS advances dramatically in external storage shipments
- Drive attach: significant penetration
- Host attach: steadily growing
Download presentation... (PDF)
White Papers
SCSI Trade Association White Paper
by: Harry Mason, Director, Industry Marketing, LSI Corp.,
With Contributions by Jay Neer, Advanced Technical Marketing Manager,
Industry Standards, Molex
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) burst upon the storage scene in 2004 as a serial replacement for the once ubiquitous parallel SCSI interconnect. While much attention is often given to the capabilities of the protocol and to the silicon and software required to implement these systems, it is often the physical interconnections that influence the adoption of I/O in a variety of market segments. Parallel SCSI, for example, supported everything necessary for clustered server deployments; however, the large unwieldy nature of the parallel cables and the restricted cabling distances greatly limited SCSI's applicability in these markets.
Download white paper (PDF)Press Releases
Controllers Deliver Greater than Two Million IOPS and Expanders Provide 68 Ports of SAS Connectivity to Enable Mainstream SSD Deployment
SUNNYVALE, Calif., January 31, 2012 - PMC-Sierra, Inc., (Nasdaq:PMCS) or PMC, the semiconductor innovator transforming storage, optical and mobile networks, today announced availability of its 12Gb/s SAS protocol controllers, RAID-on-Chip (RoC) controllers and expanders to enable breakthrough performance and scalability for server and networked storage. High-performance solid state drives (SSDs) can deliver up to 100 times more I/Os per second (IOPS) than traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), creating the need for a new class of storage controller. PMC's 12Gb/s SAS controllers are optimized for performance to solve this need and release the full potential of SSDs. With the addition of the industry's highest port count expanders, PMC's 12Gb/s solution delivers 40 percent more drive connectivity than competitive solutions, enabling a new generation of scalable tiered storage for corporate and cloud data centers.
Technology demonstration to highlight significant performance benefits of 12Gb/s SAS with existing 6Gb/s drive infrastructure
ACCELERATING INNOVATION SUMMIT, MILPITAS, Calif., November 15, 2011 — LSI Corporation (NYSE: LSI) today announced it is demonstrating the industry's first 12Gb/s SAS expander IC this week at the LSI Accelerating Innovation Summit and Technology Showcase in Milpitas, Calif.
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) remains the proven platform for storage innovation and the gold standard for enterprise computing
SAN FRANCISCO - November 9, 2011 — Creating significant news for data storage OEMs, system builders and end-users who are seeking fast, flexible and reliable data access, the SCSI Trade Association (STA) (http://www.scsita.org/) today announced the definition and standardization phase of 12Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) technology is progressing as anticipated. STA, a non-profit industry association established to support and promote SCSI technology, also noted that the development and testing of components such as cables, connectors, protocol analyzers and controllers based on this new generation of SAS for storage solutions has begun in earnest.
STA looks to the future as SSD devices and dynamic zoning gain in popularity and new features such as 12Gb/s SAS and optical connections begin to unveil themselves
SAN FRANCISCO - October 4, 2011 — The SCSI Trade Association (STA) (http://www.scsita.org/), a member-run industry association established to support and promote SCSI technology, announced today that the 12th Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Plugfest was held September 19-23, 2011, at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL). Sixteen companies, including both STA members and non-members, attended the event.
LSI® SAS ROC delivers I/O performance levels needed to unlock the full potential of flash storage and forthcoming PCI Express 3.0-based server platforms
INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, Calif., September 13, 2011 — LSI Corporation (NYSE: LSI) today announced it is demonstrating its next-generation 12Gb/s SAS RAID-on-Chip (ROC) technology this week, September 13-15, at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco.
The IDF demonstration showcases a single 8-port 12Gb/s SAS ROC IC achieving over 1.2 million IOPS (I/O operations per second) running small block sequential reads/writes in a PCI Express® 2.0 direct-attached storage configuration connected to eight 6Gb/s Seagate® SAS 2.5-inch hard disk drives.
Technology demonstrations for OEM customers break the million IOPS performance barrier with a single 8-port RAID-on-Chip ICM
MILPITAS, Calif., July 25, 2011 - LSI Corporation (NYSE: LSI) today announced the industry's first sample shipments of 12Gb/s SAS RAID-on-Chip (ROC), controller and expander ICs to server and external storage OEMs, underscoring LSI® leadership in the SAS market segment. By providing customers with early samples of 12Gb/s SAS silicon, LSI is delivering a key technology milestone and laying the foundation for the anticipated SCSI Trade Association 12Gb/s SAS Plugfest in mid-2012.
