SNIA SCSI Trade Association Forum and INCITS/SCSI Unveil 24Gb+ SAS

SNIA SCSI Trade Association Forum (STA) and the INCITS/SCSI standards organization announce advancements in storage technology with the launch of 24Gb+ SAS (Serial Attached SCSI).

This step represents multiple years of contributions from STA and T10 member companies, working cooperatively to expand the SAS specification for substantial industry benefit.

24Gb+ SAS features:

Command Duration Limits (CDLs): Control of latencies, also known as Open Compute Project Fast Fail (this feature specifically geared for HDDs, and hyperscale applications).
Format with Presets (next gen SMR): Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) reduction, relative to SMR or CMR, where a device can support multiple formats that previously required customized devices, thus reducing inventory requirements for customers and suppliers (this feature specifically geared for HDDs, and hyperscale applications).
Logical Depopulation: Ability to identify bad platters and logically remove them from data set (this feature specifically geared for HDDs, and hyperscale applications).
Rebuild assist for SSDs: Rebuild assist allows discovery of logical blocks that are not readable and therefore need to be rebuilt from an alternate source.
Persistent Connections: Opens the connection and leaves it open, so this eliminates some of the overhead for additional opens and closes. Optimizes performance by removing this overhead (for high performance SSDs).

“Tried and true SAS technology continues its march forward, continuing to innovate data storage. 24Gb+ SAS provides features that help hyperscale and enterprise servers alike,” said Tom Coughlin, president, Coughlin Associates. “These enhancements promise improved efficiency and scalability, marking a notable progression in storage technology.”

“24Gb+ SAS is a big step forward for our industry and continues to demonstrate the value of SAS technology in the broader scope of data storage. These key features span hard disk drives and SSDs and benefit hyperscalers, as well as traditional servers and storage,” said Cameron T. Brett, chair, SNIA STA Forum board of directors. “SAS and SCSI have been around for more than 30 years, delivering high performance, reliability, and scalability to data centers, and 24Gb+ SAS continues this taking data storage to the next level.“

“The T10 Technical Committee is proud to contribute to the development of 24Gb+ SAS, a milestone that will drive the future of storage technology,” added Bill Martin, chair, T10 standards organization (INCITS/SCSI). “This achievement reflects our commitment to advancing industry standards and ensuring interoperability.“

Innovations in the spec span all aspects of 24Gb+ SAS, and include the specs that have been released since SAS-4: