Low cost, high reliability and simpler deployment is
fuelling interest in Serial Attached SCSI, an emerging data storage
standard.
Serial Attached SCSI, the newest development in SCSI technology,
is designed to provide enterprise-class performance, high
reliability at low cost.
In a study of 100 IT directors by Vanson Bourne for Fujitsu, 45%
of respondents said they would consider deploying Sas in their
storage environments.
Respondents in organisations with up to 3,000 employees were
attracted by the low set-up cost of Serial Attached SCSI. Fifty two
per cent of respondents from companies with fewer than 3,000 staff
said they would consider adding it to their infrastructure, but
this figure dropped to 37% for respondents from businesses with
more than 3,000 employees.
One of the advantages of Serial Attached SCSI is that
performance improves with each drive that is added into the disc
array, making it possible to configure very high-performance
transaction servers at costs comparable to traditional parallel
SCSI-based systems, according to Fujitsu.
Serial attached SCSI drives are compatible with existing SCSI
software and operating systems. A serial attached SCSI
infrastructure can also accommodate SATA devices, enabling users to
mix and match the technologies, using SATA drives for non-mission-
critical applications.