SAS Data Center Storage Advancements Highlight the 12th SCSI Trade Association Plugfest Event

STA looks to the future as SSD devices and dynamic zoning gain in popularity and new features such as 12Gb/s SAS and optical connections begin to unveil themselves

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The SCSI Trade Association (STA) (http://www.scsita.org/), a member-run industry association established to support and promote SCSI technology, announced today that the 12th Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Plugfest was held September 19-23, 2011, at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL). Sixteen companies, including both STA members and nonmembers, attended the event.

“The STA Plugfests are a very important gauge of assessing market implementations to various enhancements of the SAS specification,” said Harry Mason, president of the SCSI Trade Association and director of Industry Marketing for LSI Corporation. “This event took on an even greater significance as new SAS capabilities such as 12Gb/s and optical connections begin to unveil themselves in the market.”

All Plugfests have consistently provided the means to preserve existing storage investments, deliver a favorable end-user experience, demonstrate interoperability, and support both forward and backward compatibility.

12^th STA Plugfest Highlights

Aside from bringing new and revised products into standard testing flows, the 12^th STA Plugfest was highlighted by the following testing activities:

• Advanced Connectivity and interoperability testing including the latest active copper and optical connections
• Physical level testing of 12Gb/s SAS technology in preparation for the 2012 12Gb/s focused Plugfest
• Validation testing of Dynamic Zoning which allows users to dynamically group multiple storage devices into various zones for added storage management flexibility
• Compatibility testing of disparate solid state storage (SSD) devices
• Building competencies with next generation SAS testing and analyzer equipment

“This event once again demonstrated the superior enterprise-class system performance and scalability of SAS as we look ahead to the many capabilities of the next generation of the standard,” said Mike Fitzpatrick, Engineering Fellow, Toshiba America Information Systems and chairperson of the SAS Plugfest Technical Committee. “It was exciting to see testing for 12Gb/s technology, the leap forward from static to dynamic automated zoning and the multiple SSD devices that were included as part of the assessments.”

The following companies attended the September 2011 Plugfest:

Agilent Technology	Molex Inc.
Amphenol Corporation	PMC-Sierra
FCI America	Serial Cables
Intel	SerialTek
JDSU	TE Connectivity
LeCroy Corporation	Tektronix
LSI Corporation	Toshiba
Maxim	Western Digital

Additional Plugfests will be scheduled in 2012. Please visit http://www.scsita.org for Plugfest updates throughout the year.

About STA

The SCSI Trade Association (STA) was established in 1996 to provide a focal point for members to communicate the benefits of SCSI to the industry. STA promotes the understanding and use of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) technology and influences the evolution of SCSI standards to meet future industry needs. The Association has a nine-member Board of Directors, which oversees the Marketing Communications and Technology Committees and all STA activities. To subscribe to Serial Storage Wire, STA's free Serial Attached SCSI newsletter, please visit: http://www.scsita.org/serial-storage-wire/. For more information, please visit the STA web site at http://www.scsita.org, send an email to [e-mail] or call the STA office at [phone].