Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disks in servers

[broc]

Has anyone any experience of using Serial attached SCSI (SAS), especially in servers? I am looking at replacing our main file server (DELL PE4600 with RAID5 SCSI) and was wondering pros/cons SAS vs trad. SCSI?

[Geoff]

Faster (3 - 6Gbit/sec bus speed is typical).
Higher device limit (16k vs 8, 16 or 32).
Support for SATA devices.

Why do you think you need SAS? Wouldn't a SAN be sufficient?

[broc]

Hadn't thought about SAN.

The question arose from the fact that the PE4600 is out of warranty (& getting short on disk space as our main file server) & I need to find some space to back up loads of staff laptop data.

My thoughts were to acquire a new file server, move the user data (staff & students) to the new box and retain the PE4600 as a DC; use it to host staff laptop backups & if necessary be a fall-back should we lose one of our other servers.

It was while I was looking at new servers I started wondering about SAS.

[john]

I have a HP Proliant ML370G5 with SAS Hard Drives, talk abotu performance, its the dogs nackers Really really speedy, takes 16 drives and they are soooo cute You can mix and match normal SATA and SAS in some of there setups so you could use a normal SATA in it for say your OS and then SAS for just filestorage.