What are the drawbacks/limitations of shared serial attached SCSI?
The biggest drawback is that your server either must support SAS or you need to purchase a SAS adapter. It’s like iSCSI, you either have that 1 Gigabit Ethernet NIC built in or you have to buy it. Other than that, the biggest drawback is concerning distance. If you are looking to build out within tens of meters within your data center, you ought to be looking at something else. If you are looking to network within a cabinet or between two adjacent cabinets, shared SAS could be a candidate. Likewise, if you are looking to support 10, 20, 30 servers, you should be looking at iSCSI or Fibre Channel. What are the major vendors in the shared serial-attached SCSI space? You don’t hear about SAS from NetApp or EMC. You don’t hear about SAS from vendors whose focus is on NAS or iSCSI. Why? These companies have a different value proposition and different approach. They’re using SAS as internal storage in their systems. Dell and HP are the ones you hear about. HP has really taken the lead with w
