To drive makers, network architects, and storage system manufacturers, the difference between enterprise-class drives and desktop and workstation drives is clear: The former are either SCSI- or Fibre Channel (FC)-based, while the latter are populated with ATA drives. But Serial ATA (SATA) is changing that.
SATA drives have already been incorporated into SAN and NAS boxes and are now being integrated into devices that previously only used SCSI or FC drives. SATA is also being integrated into system and workstation motherboards and will almost inevitably become the major type of drive included in such devices in the future.
It's also likely that the storage system you buy next year will be populated not with SCSI or FC drives, but with SATA drives. The reason for this is simple: Although SATA drives may not be as fast as Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) or FC, additional buffering on the system controller will make the perceived performance of a SATA-based storage device comparable to that of a pure FC SAN--but at a considerably lower price. Because SANs using SATA drives are fast becoming a suitable choice for most computing environments, SANs based on FC drives will become more of a niche product than they are today, relegated to Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) or large database applications where high performance and reliability are critical.
WHY SATA?
Developers of SATA didn't have much choice when it came to designing a next-generation drive interconnect standard. The fact is that Parallel ATA (PATA) had reached the end of its useful life. The industry was using an 80-pin cable for a 40-pin signal so that crosstalk between channels could be mitigated, and performance couldn't be pushed far beyond PATA's 133Mbits/sec. Additionally, PATA drives use 5V signaling. Because most chip foundries now make silicon running at 3.3V or lower, it's become increasingly hard to find the control chips necessary for PATA.
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
