STA

Author: David Woolf - Senior Technical Staff
University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab

When it comes to data storage and protection, small and medium businesses (SMBs) often find themselves not knowing where to turn for data storage solutions. They are torn between high-end product offerings intended for large enterprises, or trying to piece together a data storage solution from products intended for home users.

Like a large enterprise, a small or medium business has increasing data storage needs as the business grows. Data is a critical part of any business. Also like a large enterprise, a small business needs scalability, backup, and possibly some form of information life-cycle management (ILM).

In many cases the best solution for these needs is a storage area network (SAN), but SANs are expensive. Although the price for SAN equipment is decreasing, the high cost of the initial investment remains, making it prohibitive for a small business. An SMB does not always have the resources necessary to devote to an IT staff to support its storage needs. SMBs need a storage technology that allows flexibility, ease of use, and a lower total cost of ownership.

Author: Franco Castaldini, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, and Kent Bransford, Sr. Technical Editor Seagate Technology

Introduction
To successfully compete against today's enterprise behemoths, small- and medium-sized businesses/enterprises (SMBs/SMEs) rely on their superior agility and rapid adaptability to ever-changing business challenges. Lacking the deep pockets of their outsized rivals, SMBs/SMEs simply cannot afford to be caught flatfooted. Lumbering along in reactive mode is often costly to a large enterprise, but to an SMB/SME it can be fatal.

So it's no surprise that SMBs/SMEs bring a decidedly proactive perspective when contemplating investment in storage solutions. It's not enough for a new storage system to cost-effectively address current needs—it must also have the power and flexibility to seamlessly keep pace as storage requirements inevitably evolve. Achieving this balance of efficiency, performance and expandability has been an elusive goal for the SMB/SME community...until now.

Author: Mike Micheletti, Product Manager, LeCroy Corporation

With Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) products now entering the market, IT professionals are evaluating how this new storage architecture can benefit data centers in the small/medium business arena. Cautious about adopting new data storage technology, this IT community needs both a compelling business case as well as confidence in the long term prospects for this new architecture. SAS-based storage vendors are ready to answer these concerns with a value proposition based on performance, reliability and ease of administration that is unrivaled in the storage industry.

Enterprise Class Performance
The first-generation SAS link rate is 3Gb/second (300MB/sec) and supports full duplex data transfers up to 600MB/sec. Based on today's specs, a 15,000-RPM disk drive will sustain data rates up to 75MB/sec. This means a single SAS link can accommodate up to eight disk drives before saturating a 600MB/sec bus. With Ultra320 SCSI, the bus is saturated after four to five disk drives. So a single SAS link outperforms Ultra320. Plus, SAS introduces the concept of wide ports that allow bandwidth aggregation by combining multiple SAS links together. A 4-wide link can offer up to 1200MB/sec before saturating the system bus. IT managers can justify the investment in SAS storage system based on the superior performance and lower response time it provides for mission critical applications.