STA

Author: Sam Sawyer, Director of Product Marketing
Embedded Storage Products
Emulex Corporation

Introduction
One of the hottest topics in storage is the adoption of solid state disks (SSDs) within external storage arrays. Over the last decade, advances in hard disk drive (HDD) capacity have far outpaced the random IOPS capability of HDDs, providing a catalyst for the increased adoption of SSDs. Inherent in the mechanical nature of HDDs is a latency that creates a significant bottleneck in the movement of data to and from the storage array. Common methods of improving the IOPS capability in storage systems include high-rotational speed HDDs and striping the data across additional disk drives, yet these approaches do not dramatically improve IOPS performance. Instead, they result in a dramatic increase in power consumption. SSD technology, by contrast, can vastly improve IOPS performance (by a factor of up to 1,000) while reducing total power consumption of a storage array.

Excerpted by David Reinsel, Director, Storage Hardware Research,
IDC
Note: The following is an excerpt from an IDC publication¹

Hard disk drive (HDD) interface transitions within enterprise systems are being clouded by a number of issues. Disk storage system vendor strategies are far from similar and HDD vendors are considering various options with respect to interface technology transitions. One thing is certain: end users will not tolerate a digression from today's performance and reliability. Moreover, they expect to see cost per gigabyte continue to drop.

As the parallel SCSI HDD interface finishes its longstanding run for over 20 years, a relatively new interface, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), is prepared to take the baton. The difficulties of extending the legacy parallel SCSI interface are well-known, and SAS is being greeted with open arms. SAS drives have been available since 2004, but 'real' shipments started in 2005. Over 3.7 million SAS HDDs shipped worldwide from 2005 through 2006.

Author: Don Jeanette, Senior Manager, Product Marketing
Fujitsu CPA

Form Factor Display:

• 2.5", 3.5" Form Factors to fit your requirements
• High capacity and speed for enterprise applications (3.5" 15K)
• High capacity and cost effective performance (3.5" 10K)
• Performance and density for mission-critical data (2.5" 10K)
• Enclosures available for any form factor, spindle speed and capacity
• Enabling blade servers

PMC-Sierra was interviewed by a System Integrator about Serial Attached SCSI's Cable and Connector Features and Uses

Author: Rachelle Trent, Product Marketing Manager
PMC-Sierra
All Figures are courtesy of Molex

The challenges that System Integrators (SIs) encounter when learning how to handle new technologies, new components and especially how to make everything work together, requires research and experience. It helps them acquire the knowledge they need if they have a series of demonstrations of cables and connectors and their uses. The purpose of this article is to provide a mini-demo through the use of illustrations that are clear and easy to understand.