HP ML150 ISS Technology Update, Volume 7, Number 9 - Page 4

ISS Technology Update Volume 7, Number 9 HP Industry Standard Servers - a leader in industry standards for storage HP is involved in numerous industry standards bodies relating to server storage. Industry standards increase interoperability between past, current, and future products. Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) HP (Compaq) initiated the development of SAS in 2001, inviting LSI Logic, Seagate, and Maxtor to join together to define a replacement for parallel SCSI that supports both enterprise-class SAS drives and desktop-class SATA drives. HP has been heavily involved in the INCITS T10 (SCSI) standards committee, and has served as the editor for the SAS-1, SAS-1.1, and SAS2 standards. HP is also a Sponsor member of the SCSI Trade Association, which has marketed SAS since its inception. T10 is currently finishing the definition of 6 gigabit per second (Gbps) SAS and zoning, and is starting work on active/optical cable support, power management features, and 12 Gbps. Visit http://www.t10.org/index.html for more information. Serial ATA (SATA) HP sits on the Serial ATA International Organization Board of Directors, defining the industry's leading disk drive interface. HP founded and chaired the Interoperability Committee, which defines test cases and runs plugfests to ensure that Serial ATA products work correctly together. SATA-IO is finishing the definition of 6 Gbps. HP also participates in the INCITS T13 (ATA) standards committee, which defines the command set for SATA disk drives. T13 has been adding security features and improving solid-state disk (SSD) support. Visit www.serialata.org for more information. Fibre Channel (FC) HP is a Principal member of the Fibre Channel Industry Association, defining the roadmap for Fibre Channel and guiding the introduction of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). HP participates in the INCITS T11 (Fibre Channel) standards committee, which is starting work on 16GFC and defining FCoE. Visit http://www.fibrechannel.org for more information. iSCSI HP participated in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) IP Storage Working Group, co-editing the iSCSI standard and authoring several supplementary specifications. The IP Storage Working Group is currently dormant, having completed all its work. HP is also involved in the definition and promotion of IPv6, leading the IPv6 Forum's CTO Executive Committee. Universal Serial Bus (USB) HP is on the USB Implementers Forum Board of Directors and is a USB 3.0 Promoter. USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed USB) will provide a 10x performance increase over USB 2.0 (5 gigabits/sec versus 480 megabytes/sec). USB-IF and INCITS T10 are collaborating on a new storage protocol to improve the performance of USB-attached storage devices. Visit http://www.usb.org for more information. Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) HP is heavily involved in the INCITS T10 (SCSI) committee for development of SCSI command set standards, defining the features implemented by disk drives, disk drive enclosures, tape drives, tape libraries, and optical drives. These command set definitions apply across all the SCSI protocols (SAS, FC, iSCSI, and USB). Recently, T10 has been adding security features to many of its standards, such as encrypting LTO4 tape drives. Visit http://www.t10.org/index.html for more information. SFF Committee HP participates in the SFF Committee, which defines connectors, form factors, and physical layer test procedures used by SAS, SATA, Ethernet, and other storage interfaces. Visit http://www.sffcommittee.org/ie/index.html for more information. 4