Adaptec Serial Attached SCSI User manual

SAS END-USER GUIDE
Moving to Serial Technologies
Parallel SCSI technology has been the widely deployed standard in server and storage
data centers for the last 20 years. While parallel SCSI has been a reliable standard
interface, the technology has reached its highest performance level with the advent of
Ultra320. As servers are pushed to meet advancing system and application computing
requirements, parallel SCSI has struggled with signal skew and crosstalk, signal
termination restrictions, cable and connector reflections, and device addressability —
all of which have become barriers to next-generation throughput performance.
Industry leaders in server and storage computing have been working together to
overcome this throughput performance challenge. The result of this intensive
investigationhas resulted in transitioning parallel SCSI to a serial interface. Serial
technology transmits data in a single stream instead of the multiple streams found in
parallel technology, therefore it is not tied to a particular clock speed and can transfer
data at a much higher rate (up to 30 times faster) than parallel technology. It also offers
greater reliability and scalability.
Serial technology is not new. In fact, the SCSI evolution was based on the widely
pervasive serial network already deployed in the datacenter. In the late 1990s, storage
utilization and growth were critical issues facing the datacenter. The result was proposals
and products that aggregated storage on a dedicated ‘storage network’. This helped IT
managers to consolidate and effectively manage and grow their aggregated enterprise data
pools. Yet, successful implementation required long distance support and high speed with
minimal latency to provide rapid access to critical information that was now consolidated
away from the data center. The answer was Fibre Channel, the first serial technology to
gain significant momentum in the mainstream enterprise marketplace.
By 2002, storage networks had become pervasive in the enterprise. Yet the amount of
information continued to grow, in response to the efficiency of these networks and the
user perspective that all data is critical data. This organic data growth coincided with
strict new government data retention requirements (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley) that meant that
anew “class” of storage — non-mission-critical data — had to be kept readily accessible
for a number of years. So, the industry wrestled with the next major technology
requirement, a way to cost-effectively manage the exploding amount of storage content in
the IT infrastructure.
Cost became the principle focus. Solution vendors and industry leaders responded with
the introduction of Serial ATA (SATA), which serialized the low-cost, high-volume
desktop-class ATA hard drives with a new interface that provided adequate reliability and
performance for non-mission-critical information. Companies with data protection
expertise, such as Adaptec, responded by helping to drive best-in-class RAID technology,
that when paired with SATA hard drives, provided optimized technology at a much lower
cost. SATAalso provided higher disk interconnect speeds of 1.5Gb/s (SATA I) and 3Gb/s
(SATA II). The future is exciting for SATA, as speeds continue to increase (up to 6Gb/s in
the future) and some enterprise capabilities will be enhanced, including hot swap and
simplifiedcabling. Meanwhile, the technology will maintain the ATA family commitment
of driving the lowest acquisition cost per megabyte for enterprise IT centers.
Putting Serial Attached SCSI to Work for You
INTRODUCTION
Over the past three years, Serial
Attached SCSI (SAS) has been
unveiled as the next evolution of
the SCSI standard — featuring
increased performance,
scalability, and reliability, while
maintaining ease-of-use and the
SCSI feature set that has made
SCSI the de factostandard in
enterprise computing
environments. The first SAS
products are starting to become
available, and represent the first
step in making SAS a widely
adopted technology standard.
This guide from Adaptec will
help you understand Serial
AttachedSCSI: what it is, how it
works, how it can help you get
higher storage performance at a
lower price point, and how to put
this transition to the best use for
your existing storage and future
storage needs.
For many years Adaptec has been
the leader in SCSI products and
technology, and is bringing this
expertise to the SAS market.
During the transition to SAS,
count on us to provide you with
the information you need to use
this technology and get the most
from your storage investment.

SAS END-USER GUIDE
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Putting Serial Attached SCSI to Work for You
What is Serial Attached SCSI?
Finally, the most pervasive enterprise technology has come to a crossroads. Parallel SCSI
is the heart of the datacenter, used as the standard interconnect and hard drive
communication scheme for server and storage environments. Companies had been
developing and utilizing SCSI for over 20 years as the mainstay for enterprise storage.
But the technology’s future was coming into question. Quite simply, the parallel interface
would have to be overhauled to address next generation concerns of signal integrity,
performance and reliability, right down to fundamentals like cable length.
The result of three years of industry discussions and technological investigation is Serial
Attached SCSI (SAS), the next standard in enterprise server and storage technology. SAS
is a high-performance solution that leverages proven SCSI functionality, and builds on
the enterprise expertise of multiple chip, board, drive, subsystem, and server
manufacturers throughout the industry. It provides better performance and flexibility
than the serial technology, Fibre Channel, at a lower cost and with the same, or ever
better, reliability.
Key SAS Features Include:
•SAS and SATAdrivesupport providing an unprecedented level of choice in the
enterprise — the flexibility of integrating either SAS and/or SATA devices in common
server or storage solutions, providing customization to meet cost or performance
needs in unique business environments
•reliable point-to-point connections at 3Gb/s — up to 128 devices (or 16,256
addressable devices per port)
•full dual-ported connections for performance or failover capabilities, delivering robust
data protection and reliability right to the hard drive
• enterprise features including native command queuing and greater than 2TB LUN
support
•available in multiple hot-swappable disk drive performance and form factor
configurations including high value 3.5” 10k rpm drives, high performance 3.5” 15k
rpm drives and emerging 2.5” high density drives for performance server and
specialized high-performance storage applications
•thinner cabling than SCSI and ATA which delivers new cooling metrics and more
efficient airflow — critical in a dense computing environment where low profile
servers are racked and stacked with multiple external storage chassis. Effective heat
management and cooling schemes remain a top priority for IT managers today
delivering enhanced uptime and reliability guarantees in application sensitive
environments.
SAS delivers the high performance, scalability, and reliability required for bandwidth-
hungry mainstream servers and enterprise storage. SAS lends itself to the high-frequency,
immediate random data access required for transactional data applications such as online
purchases and bank transactions and provides the performance and security required for
mission-critical applications which demand data redundancy.
Most importantly, IT managers today cannot risk deploying the wrong type of solution.
Today,server or storage solutions represent finite choices — you must choose early on
whether you want a SATA-optimized server or storage solution, or whether you will pay
more upfront for a parallel SCSI optimized server or storage solution. If you deploy the
low-cost SATA solution, but the performance and reliability metrics fail to meet internal
user expectations and uptime service guarantees, the choice is straightforward — pick a
weekend, forklift upgrade the application and storage infrastructure, and hope that you
SAS delivers the high
performance, scalability, and
reliability required for bandwidth-
hungry mainstream servers and
enterprise storage.
SAS lends itself to the high-
frequency, immediate random
data access required for
transactional data applications
such as online purchases and bank
transactions and provides the
performance and security required
for mission-critical applications
which demand data redundancy.
“Adaptec validates the vision
of the Serial Attached SCSI
standard–with its SCSI
technology leadership,
comprehensive understanding
of resellerand end-user
requirements, and a broad range
of products that can be mix-and-
matched into SAS-based solutions
that meet a new range of storage
performance and pricepoint
needs.”
GregSchulz, Sr. Analyst,
The Evaluator Group

SAS END-USER GUIDE
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Putting Serial Attached SCSI to Work for You
can redeploy a new SCSI-based solution before the weekend is through. This does not
account for the vendor negotiation of taking back the ‘slightly used’ SATA solution, and
replacing it with a SCSI solution.
SAS breaks these barriers. Deploying standard server and storage chassis based on SAS
architecture makes it easy to purchase and maintain service spares by leveraging common
components (power supplies, memory, etc.), and ensures that IT staff is up to speed and
very comfortable with the server and storage solution.
The most compelling part of SAS is that the datacenter manager can now customize the
type of storage for an environmental infrastructure. If the application is not mission
critical or consumes capacity at an unmanageable pace, SATA hard drives can be
deployed into the SAS ecosystem, which is able to auto-negotiate with both SATA and
SAS hard drives. If needs change and performance and reliability become the dominant
requirement, the IT manager can simply migrate existing SATA hard drives to more
robust SAS hard drives, then redeploy the SATA technology into another server or storage
farm. All this can be done without having to forklift upgrade or disrupt the application
server or storage chassis.
Serial Attached SCSI Market Overview
Today, in the $13 billion storage marketplace, three dominant technologies account for
the lion’s share of sales: SCSI, Fibre Channel, and SATA.
Asshownin Figure 1, current technology requires the use of different hard disk types to
meet the needs of the common range of applications. Each hard disk type must use a
controller with the same interface type. For example, a high-end performance system
based on Fibre Channel disk drives requires a Fibre Channel controller interface. Some
Fibre Channel deployments are Storage Area Networks (SANs) in which large data
centershave deployed a dedicated high speed network and require dual redundant paths
right to the hard drive to ensure reliability and performance.
An affordable low-end SATA storage solution requires both SATA hard disks and a
controller with a SATA interface. This inflexibility limits your choice in solutions and
forces tradeoffs in your storage, such as performance and cost.
In contrast, SAS will become a nearly universal interface, dramatically changing the
storagelandscapeand dominating market share and revenues. As shown in Figure 2,SAS
will give you new, more cost-effective performance options for the high-end applications
currently dominated by expensive Fibre Channel solutions. A SAS backplane also
supports SATA disk technology, allowing you more flexibility in the solutions you can fit
into one common storage enclosure. It also provides investment protection: start with
low-cost SATA drives, then migrate to SAS drives as needs change, for Fibre Channel-
comparable performance in the same enclosure. In fact, for many business solutions, SAS
allows you to more finely tune the relationship between performance and price point
while dramatically simplifying overall system management.
The transition from parallel SCSI and Fibre Channel technologies to SAS is starting right
now,with SAS being integrated into solutions that will be ramping in 2005. In fact,
SearchStorage has forecast that this year SAS will become the hottest direct attached
storage (DAS) connection technology. Quite simply, by the end of 2005, SAS will be the
industry’s fastest growing storage technology.
Fibre Channel
High-end
Mid-range
Low-end
SCSI
SATA
Disk Drive TypeApplications
Fibre Channel
High-end
Mid-range
Low-end
SCSI SAS
SATA
Disk Drive TypeApplications
Storage Connectivity Market Today
SAS Impact on Storage Connectivity
Figure1: Today, applications are
addressed by specific drive types.
Figure 2: SAS gives you new flexibility
to choosethe drive performance
requirements needed at any point-in-
time at a price point that makes sense
for your budget.

SAS END-USER GUIDE
Economics of Serial Attached SCSI
SAS provides SCSI-like price, performance, and reliability points between Fibre Channel
and SATA to give you more flexibility in choosing solutions. Table 1 illustrates the cost
differentials between these three technologies on an identical disk-to-disk-to-tape
configuration. An approximation of a sample configuration is used in the example in
Table 1 to illustrate the cost/performance benefits of SAS in this solution. Keep in mind
that a SAS drive can read and write at least twice as fast as SATA.
Table 1. .Sample configuration pricing based on March ’05 pricing from several major catalog reseller websites. Items priced were 3TB Adaptec storage
enclosures, HP Windows-based servers, VERITAS Backup Exec with library support, and a 3TB Quantum M1500 library.
Remember that the actual cost of any of these technologies is more than the cost of
acquisition, and you need to look at the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) or what you will
need toinvest in deployment, maintenance, and administration costs. Take Fibre
Channel, which has a high acquisition cost and a high TCO, for example. This combined
cost means that Fibre Channel deployments usually are found in SANs, and that you are
investing heavily in a dedicated high-speed network to enhance storage reliability and
performance, including more efficient movement of information over multiple locations.
The implied TCO costs usually include dedicated storage IT staff that requires extensive
FC and SAN training, the expense of multiple software technologies being utilized to
track and manage the effectiveness of SAN data movement, the cost of the cabling
infrastructure, and depending on replication and remote location integration, the ability
to replicate data over a carrier’s long distance fibre network. This means that acquisition
and TCO costs are high for a SAN, which has limited its wide market adoption into
mainstream datacenters around the world.
Similarly, SATA configurations offer performance trade-offs. Though SATA provides the
lowest initial acquisition cost, it does not offer mainstream enterprise feature
functionality. SAS, however, delivers a compelling value proposition for the mainstream
IT datacenter — the benefits of lower costs, high performance, and flexible hardware
configurations, improved margins and customer satisfaction on nearly any storage
solution. Keep in mind also that if you are using SAS, you can continue to use that
enclosure for a different purpose as storage needs change over time, creating a compelling
TCO value proposition.
Mix and Match Architectures for Flexible Cost Structures
The value and flexibility of SAS enables a variety of new storage solutions that haven’t
been possible before:
•Highly reliable, high-performance primary storage for small and medium businesses
who can’t afford a Fibre Channel solution.
Fibre Channel Serial Attached SCSI Serial ATA
Tape Library ~$20,000 ~$20,000 ~$20,000
Drives 222
Media SDLT 320 SDLT 320 SDLT 320
1U Server ~$4000 ~$4000 ~$4000
Cabling & Controller ~$500 ~$500 ~$500
Backup Software ~$1000 ~$1000 ~$1000
AccessoryCost: ~$25,500 ~$25,500 ~$25,500
Disk Array
RAID Controller Dual Redundant Dual Redundant Dual Redundant
Disk Drives (3TB) 10x300GB 10x300 12x250GB
Enclosure/Drive FC/FC FC/SAS or SATA FC/SATA
Disk Storage Cost: ~$40,000 ~$20,000 ~$18,000
4
Putting Serial Attached SCSI to Work for You
TAPE LIBRARY DISK STORAGE
SERVER WITH
BACKUP SOFTWARE
LAN
One Common Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape
Solution

SAS END-USER GUIDE
•Make the best use of your Fibre Channel investment by offloading less-valuable data
to a high-performance, high-reliability system with SAS and/or SATA drives and a
Fibre Channel HBA interface.
•Get more storage in the same space with higher-density solutions, made possible since
four small form-factor SAS drives will fit into the same enclosure that today holds
only three drive bays.
•Integrate low-cost SATA drives into your SAS-based solutions and still take advantage
of the performance and reliability of the SAS connection for more cost-sensitive
situations.
When to Choose SCSI, Fibre Channel, or SAS?
Although SAS will become the dominate standard, and should become part of your
storage plan, for the foreseeable future, SCSI, Fibre Channel, and SAS will co-exist. As we
have done during previous technology transitions, Adaptec will continue our industry-
leading support for both the existing and new technologies.
Figure 3: SAS will become the technology of choice for most storage needs, while coexisting
with FC and SATA for very high end, or very cost-conscious requirements.
If you haveinvested in a Fibre Channel infrastructure, beginning your transition to SAS
enclosures now allows you to increase storage scalability and flexibility, while
maintaining Fibre Channel connectivity to the network.
If you have invested heavily in an extensive parallel SCSI infrastructure that you are
looking tomaintain, for the moment, it makes sense to continue to rely on your trusted
SCSI solutions.
Think about transitioning to SAS sooner rather than later if you
•Want to simplify the datacenter — standardize on a SAS-based server or storage
chassis
•Are seeking a long-term strategic storage solution
•Need a lower TCO
•Need high-performance, enterprise features and value pricing
•Are ready to transition to networked storage for the first time
•Are ready to adopt the new standard instead of investing further in an Ultra320
standard that has reached the end of its development
• Need the flexibility of SAS for a multi-use storage solution
Serial Attached SCSI Implementations
SAS components will be available from all of the major disk drive vendors, host adapter
suppliers, storage suppliers, chipset manufacturers, large computer makers, and many
other companies. With these solutions, you can take advantage of the increased flexibility,
reliabilityand performance of SAS components. This section gives you a glimpse into the
types of solutions that will be available using SAS components.
High-End Low-end
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)
Fibre Channel (FC) Serial ATA(SATA
Enterprise Storage Continuum
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Putting Serial Attached SCSI to Work for You

SAS END-USER GUIDE
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Putting Serial Attached SCSI to Work for You
SAS Components and Systems
Host Bus Adapters:
SAS host bus adapters (HBAs) feature 300MB/s connections. Multiple ports increase the
total available bandwidth; as an example, an eight-port HBA would provide a total
bandwidth of 4800MB/s.
Another new feature to look for when choosing an HBA is the newest RAID level —
RAID 6. RAID 6 data protection offers twice the fault tolerance of RAID 5. A machine
protected by RAID 5 can only sustain the failure of one hard drive and is vulnerable to
data loss if another drive fails while the array is rebuilding and in the degraded mode.
Amachine protected by RAID 6 can sustain two drive failures, and therefore is far more
available than other RAID levels. This is ideal for SATA environments which can be
susceptible to drive failure. The cost of RAID 6 is only one additional disk drive, a small
price to pay for this significantly improved protection.
Disk Drives:
One of the benefits of the SAS interconnect technology is its ability to support both SAS
and SATA drive types. This offers the flexibility to hit a price point with low-cost lower-
performance SATA drives, and also provide maximum performance and reliability using
SAS drives; achieving the right balance between cost, performance, and reliability.
SAS disk drives are dual-ported, like Fibre Channel drives. SAS drives are also rated at the
same reliability level as SCSI and FC hard drives, meeting your most demanding
reliability and availability needs.
SAS provides a high-speed, high-density alternative to SCSI. As such, the first places it is
being deployed will be in point-to-point solutions, such as DAS and clustered storage
scenarios. These first SAS topologies will deploy SAS internally while still relying on Fiber
Channel or iSCSI for interconnecting external storage enclosures.
Internal Enclosures:
SAS enclosures can accommodate SAS or SATA disk drives. Using SAS drives in an
enclosure provides highly reliable and highly available storage, suitable for primary
storagesolutions. Initial capacity provided by a SAS enclosure can be easily increased
with SAS expansion arrays.
Using RAID 6 in conjunction with an enclosure provides higher availability levels than
RAID 5, making it suitable for primary storage even if lower-cost SATA disks are used
instead of SAS disks.
Expanders:
SAS expanders will be introduced and will enable external SAS storage enclosures to span
multiple host initiators and external enclosures. This will allow the creation of large scale
SAS-based solutions; expanding far beyond the number of drives and unit numbers SCSI
can support today. When coupled with RAID 6, these configurations can create high-
performance, highly scalable, and highly available solution sets.
External Storage Arrays with Internal SAS/SATA Disk Drives:
External storage arrays are currently available with SCSI, SATA, and FC disk drives.
Adding the capability of SAS drives provides additional flexibility to configure high-
performance, high-reliability solutions and/or low cost, high-density solutions,
depending onthe intended application and reliability needs.

SAS END-USER GUIDE
7
Putting Serial Attached SCSI to Work for YouPutting Serial Attached SCSI to Work for You
Solutions
1. High-Performance Internal Direct Attached Storage (DAS)
Application: High-availability, high-reliability internal storage for workstations and
servers
This solution uses a SAS RAID HBA with either internally connected point-to-point
drives, or using a four-drive-bay, 5.25” internal enclosure, and is ideally suited for:
•Applications that require high availability through mirroring
•High-reliability solutions through the use of SAS drives
•High-performance demands that can take advantage of SAS throughput
•Applications that require point-to-point connections within the server chassis with
simplified cabling
•CAD/CAM/CAE or modeling applications
•Small capacity databases
•Workstation-based video and audio capture and editing
Solution Elements:
Servers
SAS RAID HBA
External or internal SAS/SATA hard drives or internal four-drive chassis with disk drives
2. High-Performance, Highly-Available, and Scalable DAS
Application: Easy scalability for databases and other continually growing datasets
As illustrated, this solution combines the highest performance, highest availability though
a comprehensive RAID set, and highest scalability available for direct attached storage
(DAS). In this example an 8-port RAID HBA is used. In its simplest form, an internal
four 3.5”drive5.25” chassis can also be used with the HBA, for storage requirements
internal to the server. For higher capacity needs, a SAS external JBOD enclosure can be
connected to the HBA.
SAS provides higher scalability than the existing SCSI standard and is similar to Fibre
Channel. Simply daisy chain JBODs to the RAID card to add capacity.
With the external enclosure and SAS drives, this solution is ideal for enterprise-class
primary storage applications with high availability needs, including data warehousing,
databases, and decision support, in any demanding application environment.
SAS HBA or
ASIC on MB
3.5” or 2.5” drive bays
SAS/SATAJBOD Server
CDROM & LEDS
4x internal cable
Internal hot-swap
backplane
12C
12C

SAS END-USER GUIDE
Solution Elements:
Server
8-port SAS RAID HBA for 4800MB/s total bandwidth
RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50
JBOD enclosure that can be daisy-chained to additional arrays to increase capacity
Cable redundancy due to dual connectors and dual controllers in the external enclosures
Internal four-drive 5.25” chassis
3. High-Performance SAS Server Clusters
Application: Reduced-cost failover without performance loss
This solution provides an alternative to clustered Fibre Channel local loop topologies —
high performance and high availability with no single point of failure. It can be
implemented using a SAS ASIC (mounted on the motherboard) or SAS RAID HBA. The
hosts share a storage pool on the SAS JBOD enclosure, which supports either SAS or
SATAdrives. The storage pool can be easily scaled with the addition of more disks or
extra JBODs. Dual controllers with multi-path I/O support and RAID 6 provide the
highest availability, even with low-cost SATA drives.
Ideal for applications including:
•High-performance enterprise cluster configurations
•Business-critical primary storage
•Data warehousing
•Video and audio streaming
SAS HBA or
ASIC on MB
3.5” or 2.5” drive bays
SAS/SATAJBOD Server
4x internal cable
either/or 3.5” or 2.5” form
factor drive bay
12C
12C
8
Putting Serial Attached SCSI to Work for You

SAS END-USER GUIDE
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Putting Serial Attached SCSI to Work for You
Solution Elements:
Servers with support for multi-path I/O (MPIO) support if path failover is required on
the same server
Cluster Software — single or dual SAS controllers and cluster software per node in the
cluster
SAS ASIC or SAS RAID HBA
JBOD external enclosure
4. Highly-Scalable SAS-based Storage Solution
Application: Future storage growth and flexible disk usage
OnceSAS expanders become available, this highly scalable, high-performance solution
will become possible across a wide variety of reliability and availability points.
The two servers, equipped with single or dual SAS RAID HBAs share a large storage pool
composed ofSAS JBOD enclosures daisy-chained using SAS connections. Both the host
storage and storage pool are highly scalable, as each SAS expander can connect up to five
chainedJBOD enclosures. Cascading the expanders, as shown, greatly increases the
number of devices that can be addressed. Dual redundant paths are created through the
external disk enclosures directly to the disks. SAS drives or SATA drives can be used. Also,
adding RAID 6 further increases the availability of the configuration.
It is ideal for enterprise data centers that require the connectivity of medium-sized SAN
configurations for applications including:
•Business-critical primary storage applications with no single point of failure
•Data warehousing
•Video and audio streaming
•Primary databases
ASIC, HBA or
RAID Controller
ASIC, HBA or
RAID Controller
SAS JBODServer1Server 2
4x internal cable
to internal drives
4x internal cable
to internal drives
12C
SAS
ASIC
SAS
ASIC
SEP

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Putting Serial Attached SCSI to Work for You
Solution Elements:
Servers
Dual SAS controllers — either controller will work, depending on application needs
Cascaded external SAS expanders, when available
Daisy-chained SAS JBOD enclosures
Dual-redundant paths directly to SAS disks
Expansion for up to five enclosures per expander
Scalable, SAN with SAS/SATAdisk drives
5. High-Performance, Highly-Available, and Scalable Fibre Channel SAN with
SAS/SATAdisk drives
Application: Fibre Channel SANs with the flexibility to choose the performance of SAS
disks or low-cost, high-density SATA disk drives
This solution combines a Fibre Channel switch, Fibre Channel host bus adapters, and an
external array that can be used with SAS or SATA disks to build a complete SAN.
Solution elements:
Two Servers
Two Fibre Channel HBAs
Fibre Channel Switch
12-Drive SAS/SATA RAID external enclosure with single or dual controller options
SERVER 2
FC HBA
FC HBA
FC HBA
SERVER 1
FC HBA
SAS/SATA
STORAGE ARRAY
FC SWITCH
FC SWITCH
SAS HBA
SAS External JBODs
Server
SAS EXPANDER
SAS EXPANDER
SAS EXPANDER
SAS EXPANDER
SAS EXPANDER
SAS HBA
Server

SAS END-USER GUIDE
Copyright 2005 Adaptec Inc. All rights reserved. Adaptec and the Adaptec logo are trademarks of Adaptec, Inc., which may be registered in some jurisdictions.
Allother trademarks used are owned by their respective owners.
Information supplied by Adaptec Inc., is believed to be accurate and reliable at the time of printing, but Adaptec Inc., assumes no responsibility for any errors that may appear in this document.
Adaptec, Inc., reserves the right, without notice, to make changes in product design or specifications. Information is subject to change without notice.
P/N: 666829-011 Printed in USA 06/05 3918_1.2
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Literature Requests:
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11
Putting Serial Attached SCSI to Work for You
6. Scalable, SAN with SAS/SATA disk drives
Application: IP SANs with the flexibility to choose the performance of SAS disks or
low-cost, high-density SATA disk drives
This solution combines a Gigabit Ethernet switch, an iSCSI host bus adapter (HBA), and
an external array that can be used with SAS or SATA disks to build a complete SAN.
Solution Elements:
Servers
Optional iSCSI HBAs (one or many)
Optional software iSCSI initiator
Gigabit Ethernet Switch
12-Drive SAS/SATA RAID external enclosure with single or dual controller options
Adaptec: Leading the Transition to Serial Attached SCSI
Asthe worldwide leader in SCSI technology, Adaptec is bringing its 24 years of expertise
in development and continual improvement of SCSI to SAS. We are developing one of
the industry’s broadest families of SAS and SATA products, including, HBAs, RAID
controllers and external storage disk array, based on our Flexible Storage Architecture
(FSA). FSA allows our customers to easily and seamlessly mix and match drives, creating
storage solutions that offer the right balance of cost, performance, and connectivity for
anynetwork, infrastructure, and storage opportunity.
When you choose Adaptec for your SAS solutions, you get the expertise of the most
trusted name for SCSI technology and products you know will integrate easily with each
other and with your existing networks and infrastructures. You can even take advantage
of a single software management and driver set throughout your configuration.
Adaptec offers you the simplest, most reliable transition to SAS. To learn more about
Adaptec Trusted SAS solutions, visit www.adaptec.com.
SERVER 2
STANDARD NIC
(using software intitator)
SERVER 1
ISCSI HBA
ISCSI HBA
SAS/SATA
STORAGE ARRAY
ETHERNET SWITCH
STANDARD NIC
(using software intitator)
ETHERNET SWITCH