SAS Hardware Availability

[Splash]

I should have posted this Monday, but, anyway...

According to someone I recently talked to that's in the know, SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) hardware is actually going to start becoming available to end users right around the first week of July.

Yes, it should have already been available by now, but as I understand, some of the SAS controller folks and some of the SAS peripheral folks have actually been the ones holding the show up. The SAS hard drive folks are generally waiting. What good is a SAS hard drive without a SAS controller? Then, some are going to need SAS expanders and SAS switches.

I believe the idea is that SAS will hit the marketplace more or less with a big SPLASH (no pun intended) in July, instead of a trickle slowly turning into a flood. We'll find out, soon.

 

[iGary]

Looks like SAS hardware has finally began showing up for sale:


Adaptec 48300 8-port SAS RAID Controller:
http://www.c-source.com/ttechnote.asp?part_no=1678238&src=PW
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=A0486875&cs=19&c=us&l=en



IBM 13N2227 8-port SAS RAID Controller:
http://www.computers4sure.com/product.asp?productid=3370564



Fujitsu MAV2073RC 73 GB SAS Hard Drive:
http://www.nowdirect.com/direct/add_to_cart.tsb?insertLine=FJEMAV2073RC&addAndActivate=1



IBM 36 and 73 GB SAS Hard Drives (branded "IBM," possibly OEM'd by Seagate or Maxtor):
http://www.pcnation.com/web/details.asp?affid=304&item=G08754
http://www.pcnation.com/web/details.asp?item=G08755

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=psg1MIGR-59047

 

[Handruin]

Looks like an expensive investment at this stage. I see the cards are PCI-X...is PCI-e ever going to be a possibility? I realize these cards (and SAS) are suited more for server/workstation class machines. Would be nice to see something else using PCI e. I guess it all depends on the market (wishful thinking for me).

 

[sechs]

How am I supposed to get cheap second-hand PCI-X cards if they don't make them?

 

[iGary]

...I see the cards are PCI-X, is PCI-e ever going to be a possibility?

Absolutely! It's just that they aren't available this week.

The bit of under-the-table rumours that I was privy to recently were that the SAS hard drives were to probably start showing up the last week of June or the first week of July with SAS controllers and related peripheral hardware showing the next week or so after that.

LSI Logic definitely has a PCI Express SAS controller they've been showing about for a while at the various expos and SAS plug-fests. Adaptec has had one planned as well.

Full-duplex SAS hard drives communicating with full-duplex SAS controllers communicating with a full-duplex PCI Express peripheral expansion bus communicating with full-duplex HyperTransport should be the consummate "bee's knees" in storage throughput, and you can add inexpensive SATA hard drives to the mix as well.

 

[Gilbo]

I doubt we'll see PCIe SAS controllers until there are motherboards to support them. To my knowledge the first PCIe Server chipset is Intel's Blackford chipset which will support 3, 8x lanes.

It's due to arrive with/slightly-after the dual-core Xeons Dempsey and Paxville, sometime in the first half of 2006.

I have no idea how I kept those codenames straight without googling all over the Inquirer & Register.

 

[Onomatopoeic]

There should be some 4-lane SAS RAID controllers available in the next several weeks. A couple of 1-lane SAS SCSI host adapters should start showing up soon as well.

A 1-lane PCI Express slot is equivalent to -- if not a bit faster than -- an old-style 64-bit 66 MHz parallel PCI slot.