SAS Technology in an Ultra-density 24 x Hot-swap Drive Enclosure

SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) is a computer bus technology primarily designed for the transfer of data to and from devices such as hard drives, CD-ROM drives and so on. It is designed for the corporate and enterprise market as a replacement for parallel SCSI (Small Computer System Interface), allowing for much higher speed data transfers than previously available, and is backwards-compatible with SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drives. Though SAS uses serial communication (the process of sending data one bit at one time sequentially) instead of the parallel method found in traditional SCSI devices, it still uses SCSI commands for interacting with SAS End devices.

Currently, SAS is popular on high-performance workstations and servers. RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) on servers almost always use SAS hard disks.

SAS interfaces can support faster data transfers than parallel SCSI cables. The SAS connector is much smaller than traditional parallel SCSI connectors allowing for the small 2.5 inch drives. SAS supports point data transfer speeds up to 3 Gbps (gigabits per second), and is expected to reach 12 Gbps by the year 2012.

The physical SAS connector is available in several different options including:

• SFF 8482 – which is form factor compatible with SATA

• SFF 8484 – Hi-density internal connector for connecting up to 4 devices

• SFF 8470 – Hi-density external connector (also used as an internal connector) for connecting up to 4 devices

• SFF 8087 – Molex iPASS reduced width internal 4x connector with future 10 Gbps support

• SFF 8088 – Molex iPASS reduced width external 4x connector with future 10 Gbps support

The SFF 8482 connector allows for SATA drives to connect to a SAS Backplane (a printed circuit board that connects several connectors in parallel to each other), which eliminates the need to install an additional SATA controller just to attach a DVD-writer, for example.

Our most recent data storage enclosure solutions are based on providing a high level of connectivity to all storage interfaces using SAS / SATA technology. Our SAS / SATA RAID enclosure Model # EJ-5U6528 is designed to provide an ultra-density 24 x hot-swap drive enclosure in a 5U form factor.

EJ-5U6528

EJ-5U6528 is equipped with 6 x universal Multi-Lane Backplanes that support SAS / SATA drive tiers. The ultra-density drive carrier provides front access hot swap insertion and removal of the disk drives. The Multi-lane design enables highly reliable and streamlined enterprise-class SAS / SATA storage solutions by greatly reducing the number of cables needed to connect controllers, backplanes, and standard SAS / SATA drives.

A Multi-lane SAS / SATA cable and connection system is:

• Fast, secure, simple, and clutter free.

• Combines the RAID controller's 4 SAS/ SATA ports into a single locked connection.

• Four lanes of 3 Gbps SAS/ SATA traffic travel through one cable from the RAID controller to the system backplane, or to up to four hard drives with a breakout cable

(Multi-lane SFF-8087 and SFF-8470 cables provide internal connectivity from the controller to the drives and the backplane. Multi-lane SFF-8088 cables provide external connectivity from the controller to the sidecar.)

This design makes EJ-5U6528 an ideal platform for SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network Attached Storage) applications that require high density and high performance online storage and network infrastructure support.