What are its key benefits of the new iteration of Serial Attached SCSI?
Schulz: The key [benefit is that] it’s running at 6 Gbps, as opposed to [3 Gbps]. Certainly you get that speed. Most of the Fibre Channel disk drives that are shipping today are 4 [Gbps], with 8 [Gbps] as a connector going from the server to the storage system, but on the back side those systems are supporting either 3 [Gbps] or 6 [Gbps] SAS on an increasing basis. So you’ve got the speed. Here’s the other thing: With [SAS-2], you have enhanced capability for SAS switching. The SAS switching occurs either on an adapter or on a server board or on a blade or within a storage system, which means the ability to support more SAS devices per port. So you have that capability of enhanced speed and enhanced connectivity. But SAS [6Gbps] also [has] enhanced interoperability and by nature when you have a SAS port, you can attach SAS devices but you can also attach SATA devices, which drives the cost per port down.
