LSI Demos One Million IO/s Using 6Gb SAS Technology

LSI Corporation (LSI) announced that it is the first company to achieve more than 1 million input/output operations per second (IOPS) in a 6Gb/s SAS performance demonstration running on a single server. One million IOPS is a crucial step toward increasing the adoption of direct-attached storage (DAS) as a scalable and sharable solution for organizations struggling to keep pace with growing data volumes and rising data center costs.

"A successful laboratory demonstration of 1 million IOPS is an important milestone for 6Gb/s SAS technology," said Dave Reinsel, group vice president of storage and semiconductor research at IDC. "This level of performance and scalability paves the way for increased DAS adoption in data center environments while potentially lowering costs and energy consumption."

One million IOPS was achieved using a single white box server powered by three LSISAS2108 6Gb/s SAS RAID-On-Chip ICs connected to twelve 6Gb/s SAS 2.5-inch hard disk drives. The demonstration showcases execution of I/O throughput in a DAS environment at 6Gb/s speed.

"SAS has the scalability and performance that we need in the data center environment," said Chris Lionetti, senior systems engineer, Microsoft Corporation. "SAS 2.5-inch drives deliver greater density and significant power reductions, which translate to critical cost savings in the data center."

LSI first demonstrated 100,000 IOPS on a single server in 2002 (Ultra320 SCSI), followed by 500,000 IOPS performance in 2006 (3Gb/s SAS). Now, LSI has eclipsed 1 million IOPS, demonstrating the performance necessary to support data mining, server and I/O virtualization and mega data centers which require rapid access to mass quantities of data.

"We believe 6Gb/s SAS will extend the market opportunity for DAS in the data center," said Steve Fingerhut, senior director of marketing, Storage Components Division, LSI. "As a SAS market segment leader, LSI is well positioned to build upon the success of its 3Gb/s SAS products to enable 6Gb/s SAS-based systems."

According to IDC estimates, availability of 6Gb/s SAS-based OEM servers will begin in late 2009 and is linked to volume shipments of SAS ecosystem components and devices. LSI is currently sampling 6Gb/s SAS MegaRAID(R) adapters and 6Gb/s SAS ROC and expander ICs to leading OEMs and server manufacturers worldwide.

LSI, along with experts from Dell, IBM and Microsoft, participated in a 6Gb/s SAS panel discussion at Storage Networking World in Orlando, Fla. The panel was moderated by Dave Reinsel of IDC and examined topics including the 6Gb/s SAS ecosystem and key factors for market adoption, the expanded application space and how this will impact DAS deployments in the data center. Panelists also blog about "SAS in the Enterprise" during SNW.

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