Cloud computing trends: Looking at server and storage integration

Looking at every stage of it development, whether mainframe, minicomputer, or later in the PC, Internet age, we all find that the subversion of it usage thinking and patterns leads to a big change in technology trends. In fact, the concept of cloud computing is beginning to become known, that has a profound impact on it technology development, its concept of highly virtualized resources and the ability to serve users instantly on demand has prompted a series of changes in the data center in recent years, including server virtualization, storage virtualization, network virtualization , unified computing, integration and many other hot spots. But this time we will be focusing on SAS and raid, from these two small areas to glimpse, and find out why the integration of servers and storage is one of the trends in cloud computing.

Chipset Integration sas--get rid of the shackles of traditional ROC

The advent of cloud computing in fact, the use of IT resources high-performance, high usage, low-cost demand, implementation of the cloud computing equipment Interface technology, is the interface technology requires high transmission performance and bandwidth, good scalability and simple cable connections. Compared with other interface technologies, SAS technology is in line with the current development trend of cloud computing.

Figure I: SAS technology has a stable technical roadmap, and has been supported by many vendors such as Intel, LSI, IBM, Seagate and so on.

SAS technology is the trend of enterprise storage interface technology, which can be validated by the whole generation of storage systems such as HDS, NETAPP, Dell, IBM and so on. The traditional ROC model (Raid-on-chip) now appears to have proved unsuitable for current technology trends, either LSI, promise "PowerPC processor +sas Controller", or "XScale processor +sas Controller" used by Intel in the past. Are the "divide and conquer" approach used in the past to address the bottleneck of computing resources, which is increasingly redundant as processors become more powerful.

Figure II: Intel's upcoming Romley platform in the second half of this year will change the traditional ROC model. The Romley platform integrates raid acceleration in the Xeon E5 processor (using the Sandy Bridge microprocessor architecture), and is more critical to support the Patsburg of integrated SAS technology, Patsburg to complete the SAS switching function.