LSI Sampling 6Gb SAS Switches

LSI Corporation announced the sampling of the industry’s first series of 6Gb/s SAS switches to OEM customers.

The new LSI model SAS6160 and SAS6161 switches significantly extend the capabilities of SAS in direct-attached storage (DAS) environments by allowing multiple servers to connect to one or more independent external storage systems. SAS616x series switches are designed to provide a low-cost and easy-to-use shared storage option for rack-mounted server and storage installations in cloud computing, mega data center and small- to medium-sized business environments.

Both SAS switches feature zoning, which enables storage resources to be safely shared across multiple hosts, helping to maximize storage resource utilization, eliminate islands of storage and simplify storage management, backup and upgrades.

"The SAS interface is widely used inside servers and storage arrays," said Bob Laliberte, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "However, with the introduction of 6Gb/s SAS and now 6Gb/s SAS switches, organizations of all sizes will have the ability to extend SAS beyond today’s DAS environments to create simple, low-cost and high-performance networked storage environments. Given the need for storage to support virtualized server environments and the advanced features and benefits offered by shared storage, these solutions are well-timed."

LSI SAS616x series switches are based on enterprise-hardened LSI silicon, firmware and software. The model SAS6160 and SAS6161 switches feature a rack-mountable 16-port, 1U profile in respective half-width and full-width form factors for quick and easy installation with rack-mounted servers and are fully compatible with existing SAS infrastructures. Both models feature 24Gb/s SAS connections on 16 x4 SAS lanes to deliver an aggregated bandwidth of 384Gb/s. Each model supports SAS and SATA connectivity to more than 1,000 devices, enabling customers to take advantage of larger SAS topologies and tiered storage solutions.

LSI SAS616x switches offer complete SAS domain management including port configuration, zoning, firmware management, diagnostics and viewing of the SAS topology. High-availability applications can be supported by using two switches with redundant data paths.

"Leveraging our expertise and technology leadership, we are delivering the industry’s first high-performance SAS switching solution for extending DAS environments," said Steve Fingerhut, senior director of marketing, Storage Components Division, LSI. "With fully integrated management software and extensive end-to-end interoperability testing, customers are assured of plug-and-play simplicity when deploying SAS616x series switches into existing SAS-based environments."

Since the inception of SAS, LSI has shipped over 18 million SAS-based products across its industry-leading portfolio of controller ICs, expanders, host bus adapters, MegaRAID and 3ware RAID controller cards, RAID-on-Motherboard (ROMB) solutions and storage systems. By offering best-in-class SAS technologies, assured interoperability and single vendor support, LSI is the silicon-to-systems supplier of choice for OEMs that want to deliver a broad set of storage solutions.

Production quantities are expected to be available to OEM customers in the second half of this year.