Channel Register: Is DAS the Storage Comeback Kid?
LSI scents resurgence
Author: Chris Mellor
Striking a note contrary to convergence and shared storage conventional wisdom, LSI is seeing signs of a resurgence in direct-attached storage.
The prevailing idea is that server proliferation and virtualisation in data centres is strengthening the need for consolidated and shared data storage, either network-attched storage (NAS) for files or block-oriented storage area networks (SANs).
LSI's Robin Wagner, senior director for storage in its components division, says that SAS and small form factor drives are beginning to change that. The evidence is anecdotal and based on LSI shipping more than 13 million SAS integrated circuit (ICs) to its customers for use mostly on servers. LSI has also shipped more than five million SAS RAID stacks, MegaRAID, etc, solely for use on servers. It's looking forward to shipping faster 6Gbit/s SAS ICs towards the end of this year.
Harry Mason, LSI's director of industry marketing, said it's not that LSI's server-oriented SAS IC shipments are growing faster than its Engenio SAS controller storage array business into the SAN and NAS markets. They are growing too and there's no evidence that server SAS is replacing networked array SAS.
Home