Whats the viability of SAS-2 as a competitor to Fibre Channel?
Schulz: In some ways, they coexist. When you look at Fibre Channel-based storage, what’s increasingly being deployed on the back end of those FC-based arrays are SAS disk drives, whether that be [3 Gbps] SAS or [6 Gbps] SAS. From an interface perspective, you’re seeing more servers being deployed with native SAS capabilities, either integrated right onto the systems themselves or shipping with adapters. So at the lower end of the market, you’re starting to see more and more deployments of either SAS-attaching storage systems or SAS being used in a shared environment. At the upper level as a host-based means of getting to storage, [it’s] not really a major threat. Down at the low end of the market, it’s a whole different ball game, where SAS is seen as an alternative to, for example, iSCSI. [It fits in that space that] used to have parallel SCSI, where today that’s being taken over by USB 2 and finding a spot for shared access between, say, two and four servers, sharing a SAS-based arra
