Trade Group Touts SAS Domination

5:53 PM -- Serial attached SCSI has arrived. According to the SCSI Trade Association (STA), SAS drives are selling like hotcakes for inclusion in systems, servers, and blades. And the group agrees with recent Gartner predictions that 12 million SAS hard disk drives (HDDs) will ship by the end of this year -- and that SAS drives will become the "dominant HDD interface in 2007."

Indeed, the STA considers Gartner's estimate that SAS drive shipments will achieve a 210 percent compound annual growth rate through 2011, not only reasonable but "conservative."

The STA plans an announcement Monday. "STA members have been aware for over a year that the shipping rates for SAS products have escalated and in particular shipping rates for HDDs," the statement reads. "To announce that SAS HDDS are establishing a record in the number of shipments made over a short period of time (late 2005 and 2006) provides a benchmark from which to judge future shipments -- which will be considerable, according to Gartner."

It's been clear for a while that SAS is taking off. (See SAS Wave Breaks Big.) But the STA is intent on underscoring the data in an effort to "encourage SAS vendors and users to continue to build and use 3Gb/s SAS products and to continue their plans to develop 6Gb/s SAS technology and future products."

By 2008, the STA says, the number of 6-Gbit/s SAS drives shipped will start to grow, and by 2008 the number will equal present SAS HDD shipments.The STA also stresses other trends. The group says its numbers show that in 2006, about 48 percent of all SAS HDDs shipped were Fibre Channel and SATA drives. Sales of Ultra320 SCSI drives will fall away completely by 2010.

More data is available at the STA web site.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch