Drives To Get Boost From SATA II

SATA is attractive because it uses commodity drive technology that is ubiquitous on desktops and for the first time deemed reliable enough for backing up data in near real-time. That lets storage administrators recover data much faster than utilizing a tape library. Of course, tape remains cheaper than disk. That is why many VARs are finding demand for disk-to-disk-to-tape solutions, allowing primary storage to remain on the more expensive arrays. From there, data is backed up to reside on SATA drives for the short term and then archived to tape.

So, where does SATA go from here? Later this fall and into next year, you will start to see drive technology based on a new and improved SATA. Aptly called SATA II, drives based on this specification promise significant performance improvements. As an attendee at the StorageWorld Conference this past summer in Long Beach, Calif., I had the opportunity to see where SATA II is headed. Maxtor, Network Appliance and LSI Logic demonstrated storage arrays based on Maxtor's new MaXLine III drives, which began shipping in quantities to the channel last month. While it remains to be seen how quickly SATA II drives will gain critical mass or whether they will displace or co-exist with current SATA technology, not all applications will warrant the new capabilities in the short term. But for those who thought SATA didn't quite cut it from a performance or throughput perspective, they may want to give SATA II a look.

The most talked-about feature in SATA II is native command queuing (NCQ), which vastly improves on a key bottleneck when multiple commands are sent to a disk. With SATA, each command is executed in the order it's received. By adding NCQ, a host can issue multiple commands and the drives intelligently determine what data has been requested and optimize the order of the commands to more efficiently render the data.

There are other benefits to SATA II as well. With the current iteration of SATA, one disk connects to one port. With support for port multipliers, which will be offered by the likes of LSI Logic, Marvell and Network Appliance, SATA II allows up to 15 disks to be connected to the same port, lowering costs and minimizing the amount of cabling required in an enclosure. SATA II will support per-port transfer rates of 1.5 Gbps and, ultimately, 3 Gbps.

Many believe SATA II will present a real opportunity for solution providers because it allows the lower-cost disks to be used in situations where SCSI and Fibre Channel drives aren't economically feasible. Furthermore, SATA II will cohabitate with another emerging disk technology--Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)--for those who want to use higher-performing SCSI drives in the same storage pool. At the StorageWorld demonstration, Maxtor and its partners displayed a prototype of a chassis loaded with both SATA II and SAS drives. The latter is supposed to start shipping in the middle of next year, though some think it will be later than that. Then there's HP's recently released EVA3000 system, which is based on the company's FATA technology--a higher-end alternative to SATA (see "HP Bets Big On StorageWorks," Sept. 27).

While the myriad of new technologies may confuse some VARs and customers, it is all good news because there are several options to address backup and recovery in ways that never could be offered. With SATA II drives currently available in the channel, now's the time to make sure you're up to speed.