Features - Storage Innovations:

SEAGATE, FELLOW TECHNOLOGY LEADERS SHOWCASE SAS TECHNOLOGY

This week at HP World 2003, Seagate Technology and other technology leaders are teaming with HP to bring Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) technology to the enterprise. Seagate, along with Adaptec, HP and Intel are among those showing key SAS technologies and highlighting their support for SAS development at the event. SAS is the SCSI growth path to greater connectivity, lower cost scalability, and higher throughput performance.

Seagate will unveil its next-generation enterprise 2.5-inch SAS hard drive for the first time in live, public demonstrations. "IT Managers are looking for ways to increase the storage capabilities and performance needs for their clients while working within the confines of limited data center space," said Brian Dexheimer, Seagate executive vice president of sales, marketing, and customer service. "SAS technology will enable the connectivity and bandwidth needed while use of 2.5-inch enterprise-class drives will deliver the performance and reliability mandated by customers to create higher performing enterprise systems in the smallest space possible."

"Serial Attached SCSI and small form factor enterprise-class drives will provide scalable speed, decreased power consumption and increased integration flexibility for diverse data needs in a variety of storage system architectures," said John Monroe, a research vice president at Gartner Dataquest.

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Serial ATA offer a new level of flexibility in configuring disk storage for cost and performance in direct-attached and networked storage deployments. SAS is the replacement interface for SCSI ideally suited for transactional data -- typically high-demand information frequently and concurrently accessed by multiple users. An additional benefit of SAS in the enterprise is the ability to scale drive interconnection; traditionally SCSI restricted the total number of connections to a relatively smaller number. Serial Attached SCSI allows up to 16,000 devices to be directly attached via expander hardware providing increased scalability and flexibility. Moreover, SAS enables the creation of unique product configurations such as high-density storage arrays combining 24 to 30 drives in one box.