White Paper
Advanced Industrial Computer, Inc.
Xtore Extreme Storage
Small Form Factor (SFF) SAS
Meeting the Demanding Requirements in Specific Markets
Copyright © 2007 Advanced Industrial Computer, Inc. (AIC). All Right Reserved.
Confidential:
THIS DOCUMENT SHALL NOT BE REPRODUCED, NOR SHALL THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HERE BE USED BY
OR DISCLOSED TO OTHERS EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY AUTHORIZED IN WRITING BY AN OFFICER OF
Advanced Industrial Computer, Inc.
Enterprise data access and transfer demands are no longer driven by advances in CPU processing alone.
Beyond the sheer volume of data, information routinely consists of rich content that increases the need for
capacity. High-speed networks have increased the velocity of data center activity. Networked applications
have inreased the rate of transactions. Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) addresses the technical requirements for
performance and availability in these more I/O-intensive, mission-critical environments.
Still, IT managers are pressed on the other side by cost constraints and the need for flexibility and
scalability in their systems. While application requirements are the first measure of a storage technology,
systems based on SAS deliver on this second front as well. Because SAS is software compatible with Parallel
SCSI and is interoperable with Serial ATA (SATA), SAS technology offers the ability to manage costs by
staging deployment and fine-tuning a data center’s storage configuration on an ongoing basis. When
presented in a small form factor (SFF) 2.5” hard disk drive (HDD), SAS even addresses the increasingly
important facility considerations of space, heat, and power consumption in the data center. The
backplanes, enclosures and cabling are less cumbersome than before. With SAS, connectors are smaller,
cables are thinner and easier to route impeding less airflow, and the same backplane can accommodate
either SAS or SATA HDDs.
Data requirements in the enterprise fall into three broad categories:
Throughput Intensive
, characterized by
large, high MB/s files requiring large block read/writes (like audio, video, and graphics);
Transaction
Intensive
, involving high-velocity calculation and high volume random small block read/writes (like financial
and commercial transactions); and
Reference Systems
, utilizing fixed or archival data handled in large
block sequential read/writes (like imaging).
SAS technology satisfies requirements in all these categories. Its full duplex architecture allows
simultaneous bi-directional data and command transfers, effectively doubling throughput. Its wide port
capabilities allow multiple high-speed physical links to be combined into a single faster high-speed port to
aggregate the bandwidth of those physical links. SAS dual porting capability and the ability to support I/O
requests from more than one controller at a time (multi-initiator) also enables the design of dynamic load
balancing systems and redundant path configurations to further increase performance and reliability.
As a result, IT managers can use SAS to achieve the enterprise-class storage and network performance they
need and protect their investments in SCSI software and middleware, while allowing maximum possible
connectivity of up to 16,384 devices (when deployed with edge and fan-out expanders).
