Storage Effect

SAS drives are thriving outside the data center, despite SATA’s cost advantage 

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) was created to replace SCSI, the long-standing enterprise hard drive interface.  It has done that, but there have been sightings far from the datacenter.  Places like Ravelry, a seemingly  home-hosted knitting website: 

Rather than shrink in the face of lower priced SATA drives, SAS drives are expanding into SATA’s domain.  What’s going on here? 

• SATA compatibility.  SATA drives interoperate with SAS, so many entry server backplanes and PC motherboards are switching to SAS to cover both interfaces.  This has created a virtual “Storage Foreign Exchange Program” as SATA drives are adopted in the enterprise, and SAS drives are tried in homes and small businesses.
• Cost.  New 1 TB 7200 RPM SAS drives like the Seagate Barracuda ES.2 cost about $50 more than their SATA equivalents. 
• Capacity.  The newest SAS enterprise-class drives like Seagate’s 450GB Cheetah 15K.6 offer more capacity than past enterprise drives.  This makes them more affordable on a cost-per-GB basis.
• Physical size.  The server market has adopted 2.5″ SAS drives en masse, and the storage system market will follow.  These drives use a lot less power and space than conventional enterprise drives without sacrificing performance.  There are no reasonable SATA 2.5″ alternatives today.

If you’re still stuck in a SCSI/SATA mindset, consider a crash course on SAS. 

Who’s replaced SATA or IDE with SAS recently?