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Survivor's Guide to 2006: Storage and Servers: Page 3 of 14

SATA (Serial ATA) II and SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) also show promise. SATA II products were released to the public in 2005; SAS was released to OEMs. Both will become readily available in 2006, and both address shortcomings of previous disk communication technologies.

Products that support SAS for data-center use will proliferate in 2006. This isn't necessarily because the technology is better than existing options (though our tests have shown it is), but because it's designed to work in with existing options. OEMs can purchase a single chip set or expansion card and support multiple drive types. Expect to see products that mix SAS with FC and SAS with SATA II, where the box is exactly the same, but the disks vary. The chipsets and controllers are ready from Adaptec, Broadcom, LSI Logic and others; watch for OEM products that implement the technology in 2006.

This is all good, because OEMs won't have to support two or three separate lines. With any luck, some savings will be passed on to customers. Your high-end and low-end arrays' hardware and software can look identical and come from the same vendor, a simplification that can help reduce errors and training time.

But what about speed? Both SAS and SATA II can support higher sustained throughputs than the technologies available today, but few products will take advantage of these speed changes in the coming year. Disk subsystems will require major changes to realize these technologies' full potential.