Serial Attached SCSI -

Serial Attached SCSIENconnect Technology

WHITE PAPER

Serial attached ScSi Wide Port With eNcoNNect techNology

Authors:Kuang Wei Chen: GM , TST USASio Fu: CTO, TST USA

Information in this document is provided in connection with TST products, No license, express or implied, by estoppels or otherwise, to any intellectual properly rights is granted by this document. All specifications and product descriptions are subject to change without notice. All registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 2005© TST USA, All rights reserved. TST USA White Paper 1001 Sio Fu

IntroductionToday’s Predominant high availability physical interconnect technology between the hot swap hard disk drives and storage host bus adapters reply on parallel transmission of data streams through a piece of physical PCB board (Backplane Board). However, parallel technology’s signal skew and crosstalk, restrictions of the single backplane board device for failed over and device addressability as well as configuration flexibility, stand as barriers to throughput performance, storage scalability and system flexibility and availability as servers are pushed to meet advancing system and application capabilities and requirements. Serial Attached SCSI with ENconnect technology were introduced to overcome these barri-ers, delivering greater variety of configuration and flexibility, better performance , reliability and scalability

Scope of this paperThis white paper is intended for Backplane designers and other who are interested in learn-ing more about the advantage of ENconnect technology. The author assumes that the read-er has a basic familiarity with the current storage architectures.

Conventional Backplane TechnologyEach backplane board is delicated to one solution, unsolvable limiitation on flexibility, avail-ability and scalability. Failure of individual component in backplane means a complete re-placement of a new backplane, leaves single points of failure that can block access to the system. Result with very high support cost and increase total cost of ownership

Figure 1. Legacy backplane, each backplane is delicated to one solution and impossible to upgrade.

ENconnect Backplane TechnologyThe most important characteristic of the ENconnect backplane technology is its flexibility to support every storage solution available in the Storage world. The ENconnect Technology has two physical parts, the Drive Backplane Board and Expander Daughter Board. These two boards are connected with easy-swap high speed connectors, enables highly flexible storage topologies. The backplane boards can support swappable daughter boards which is changable in the same enclosure can be used to build high-availablity systems with no single points of failure.


Figure 2. ENconnect Technology Backplane board and daughter Board.

High speed connector offers easy swap solution

Swappable daughter board provides unlimited combination of Storage solution

ENconnect Backplane board offers easy support and deploy cost-effective solution

ENconnect technology use the same backplane board for multiple solutions, just by changing the Daughter board for that special solution, provide pay-as-you-grow platform so customers can migrate to their unique solutions as needed. Because every solution uses the same backplane, cost reduction then can achieve by this commodification of the backplane board, offers competitive advantage in the marketplace by meeting compliance deadlines, lower the cost of building conven-tional backplane and offering reliable, user-friendly products to their end-customers ahead of any other competitor in the marketplace

Sample Solutions of ENconnect TechnologyThe following samples demonstrate the unprecedented flexibility for system designers in the storage arena utilized ENconnect Interconnect Technology

Figure 3. 1U 10 bay system utilized ENconnect Technology that support SSF 2.5” SAS Hard Disk Drive. Various solutions can be embedded in the daughter board(s) using the same backplane board.




Figure 4. 2U 20 bay system utilized ENconnect Technology that support SSF 2.5” SAS Hard Disk Drive. Various solutions can be embedded in the daughter board(s) using the same backplane board.

Figure 5. 2U 12 bay system utilized ENconnect Technology that support 3.5” SAS/SATA Hard Disk Drive. Various solutions can be embedded in the daughter board(s) using the same backplane board.

Figure 6. 3U 16 bay system utilized ENconnect Technology that support 3.5” SAS/SATA Hard Disk Drive and four LSI12X SAS Expander Chips provide HA class (no single point failure) and 12Gb performance.



Figure 8. 5U 24 bay system utilized ENconnect Technology that support 3.5” SAS/SATA Hard Disk Drive. Various solutions can be embedded in the daughter board(s) using the same backplane board.




Figure 7. 4U 24 bay system utilized ENconnect Technology that support 3.5” SAS/SATA Hard Disk Drive with one 36X SAS expander

Figure 9. Demonstrate 6U 28 bay hybid SAS system utilized ENconnect Technology with OEM SAS daughter boards, various solutions can be easy design and save the cost on layout new backplane.

Figure 10. Demonstrate 7U 40 bay hybid SAS system utilized ENconnect Technology with OEM SAS daughter boards, various solutions can be easy design and save the cost on layout new backplane.

These examples only show a small port on of the inspired flexibility of the ENconnect tech-nology. The different groups that benefit are described in the following sections.

Backplane ManufacturersUsing the convention method, backplane manu-facturers need to develop delicated backplanes for each solution. The emergence of SAS and ENcon-nect technology means that manufacturers need to develop only one backplane design. Vendors can use the same Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) to support many different types of storage solution, resulting in a less expensive board.

OEMsThe emergence of SAS and ENconnect technol-ogy means that OEMs can now sell SKU back-plane and easy upgrade daughter boards. The use of ENconnect backplane simplifies inven-tory management and result in lower costs and validation efforts. OEMs can reduce costs while maintaining margins and profitability

VARs and System IntegratorsENconnect Technology enables VARs and SI to save time on intergrating custom systems, simply by installing the perferred daughter boards. VARs no longer need to worry about installing the prop-er backplane. Instead they can simply populate the backplane with the desired daughter boards. Overall benefits include reduced inventory costs, easier product differentiation and simplified train-ing, support and reduced total cost of owerneship.

End UsersEnd users not only benefits from the cost reduc-tions from backplane manufacturers, OEMs and VARs, the ability to change storage solution without purchasing new systems simplifies the upgrade process and helps future-proof end-user investments.



ConclusionThe advantages of SAS WIde Port and ENconnect Technology are compelling. Before the advent of ENconnect Technology, backplane designers had to carefully balance the trade-offs between reliability, scalability and availability even as server performance and appli-cation requirements. Nevertherless, the flexibility limitation on the conventional backplane technology forced designers to implement separate systems for each type of solution and bear the costs of additional backplane design, manufacture and support.

Now, as a uniform backplane for the great flexibility of the SAS solutions, designers and users will be able to quickly and easily create storage system where all these elements can be used without additional system and support costs, and the different type of daugh-ter boards can be swap in and out as the enterprise’s storage needs change.

‘We have worked closely with our OEMs and understand their need to have a faster, more cost effective SAS interconnect technologies, helping our customer to achieve the critical time-to-market and feature advantages with the new SAS technology that the industry has come to expert from TST USA” said Sio Fu, CTO of TST USA.

ENconnect Technology represents both the next generation in the outgoing evolution of high performance, high availability storage solution, and a significant new advance in the architecture of physical interconnect. When it enters the market in Septermber 2005, TST USA will begin to change the storage landscape by enabling the easy custom design of highly flexible and fault-tolerant storage technology.




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