The future is serial

Dec 11, 2006 15:01 GMT  ·  By

Serial-atached SCSI (SAS) is gaining ground and will replace paralel SCSI soon, claimed LSI Logic as it launched a new range of SAS-only storage systems aimed at small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs).

"We expect to ship more SAS silicon this quarter than SCSI," stated LSI product marketer Rip Wilson. He also said that right after it bought Agere, LSI has decided to produce mainly SAS related storage and controllers mainly because the wiring is more versatile. Although the company will still keep SCSI line for the moment, in the near future they plan to produce only SAS devices integrating the line between RAID controllers (value market) and large arrays of storage (high-end market).

"We were there when SAS was specced out, and we dominate the SAS chip market. We are the only company that can ship everything in SAS, from chips through controllers to disk arrays," Mr. Wilson said.

SAS is beginning to replace SCSI from the entry level servers, especially because of its simplicity. External storage boxes based on SAS can hold from one to four disk modules, each with 12 SAS drives, and one to three SAS host ports per controller. These external storage matrixes can be shared by several servers.

"It's probably more for mid-size than small, but if your applications require performance, you really need external storage - you can only get so much performance out of internal storage," continued Mr. Wilson about the SAS technology.

Wilson also added that future SAS arrays would ship with "simple and intuitive storage management software", making possible a simple administration of the array that will not need the presence of a skilled person in order to run.