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Serial Attached SCSI

S

shadow74205

Gawd
Joined
May 30, 2002
Messages
537
Maxtor has recently tested an Serial Attached SCSI drive. The throughput was 3 Gbps. Has anyone here heard anything about when SAS drives will become available? The thought of some of these drives in s RAID configuration makes me drool.
 
3 Gbps is only 375 MB/s, and that's probably only an interface throughput figure. That's most likely not a sustained read/write transfer figure like one you would get from a typical benchmark. Like Serial ATA, Serial Attached SCSI is only an interface; it can only help performance to a certain extent. The mechanical and electronic subsystems of hard drives are the chief components of hard drive performance, not the host bus interface.
 
SAS drives and controllers should be available for general purchase near the end of this year.

The 3gigabit per second rate of the SAS interface is actually 300megabytes per second after you account for 8b/10b serial encoding overhead. Keep in mind, though, that SAS is now a point to point connection, unlike parallel SCSI, which shared the 320MB/s bandwidth with up to 16 devices on the bus. Of course, once you add expanders into the mix (basically a way to attach more than one drive per SAS port) You'll be looking at shared bandwidth again. First generation SAS controllers will have 4 or 8 ports to attach target devices to.

But as xonik mentioned, no generally available drives are capable of getting anywhere near 300MB/s sustained. Closest I've seen personally is around 90MB/s sustained on a single drive (U320 SCSI interface).

Something else to look for, some of the manufacturers will making Small Form Factor (SFF) 2.5" SAS hard drives that are very cool and perfect for building arrays out of. These little guys look very sexy compared to the (now seemingly) giant 3.5" drives.

One other cool feature of SAS controllers is they will support SATA target drives as well. Pretty cool to be able to have both types of drives hanging off the same controller!
 
Originally posted by xonik
3 Gbps is only 375 MB/s, and that's probably only an interface throughput figure. That's most likely not a sustained read/write transfer figure like one you would get from a typical benchmark. Like Serial ATA, Serial Attached SCSI is only an interface; it can only help performance to a certain extent. The mechanical and electronic subsystems of hard drives are the chief components of hard drive performance, not the host bus interface.
Click to expand...

Educational Material that expands on xoniks points ;)

UICompE02 :eek: :D
how is LSI treating you buddy?

RE: 2.5" form factor HDDs, already available (of course actually finding them...OEMs get first dibs)
http://storage.itworld.com/4650/040209seagatedrive/page_1.html
Seagate Savvio
others have anounced plans and target dates, but it will still be awhile
 
Originally posted by Ice Czar

UICompE02 :eek: :D
how is LSI treating you buddy?
Click to expand...

Excellently, thanks for asking.

Currently up to my ears in SAS stuff (World's first with working SAS silicon, by the way PR ...), so I thought I'd chime in on the subject :)
 
Originally posted by UICompE02
Excellently, thanks for asking.

Currently up to my ears in SAS stuff (World's first with working SAS silicon, by the way PR ...), so I thought I'd chime in on the subject :)
Click to expand...


Hey, just wanted to say thanks. You recommended an LSI SCSI RAID card (MegaRAID 1600) to me quite some time ago.

Wound up finding one on ebay for really cheap and it works like a charm!!
 
Originally posted by UICompE02
currently up to my ears in SAS stuff
Click to expand...

I remembered that was what you where working on ;)
ahead of schedual ehh? congratz :D

one of these days I'll need to strong arm you into a SAS FAQ :p
 
Originally posted by Ice Czar
I remembered that was what you where working on ;)
ahead of schedual ehh? congratz :D

one of these days I'll need to strong arm you into a SAS FAQ :p
Click to expand...

Sure, that could probably be arranged. Fair warning, though, I could probably easily type up 300 pages on the subject at this point... :D
 
Originally posted by UICompE02
Sure, that could probably be arranged. Fair warning, though, I could probably easily type up 300 pages on the subject at this point... :D
Click to expand...

hell we'll have to launch a website :p
 
I just wanted to thank everyone who responded to the thread. And thanks to Ice Czar for the links.
 
Your welcome, its what we are here for
you sort of got the allstar lineup with xonik & UICompE02
just missing Snugglebear :p
 
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