1. Is Good Enough Enough? Does SATA Have the Right Stuff?
Dave Reinsel
Director, Storage Research
Is Good Enough Enough? Does SATA Have the Right Stuff?

2. Setting the Context for (S)ATA in the Enterprise
Excerpts from IDC (Special Study: SerialATA Disk Drives: Impact on Enterprise Storage, December, 2003)
“If I trend off of my hard drive failures at the PC level you just lost my confidence all together. If they are not doing anything to improve performance and reliability, cost is not going to be my motivating factor.” (Bank – 7,600 employees, 37TBs, over 550 Servers, over $550K annually)
“…ATA is great but if it doesn’t give you the performance, nobody is going to want it, no matter how cheap it is.” (Insurance Firm – 5,000 employees, 32TBs, and 400 Servers, over $1M annually)
“"And I will go straight to the politics of life - I don’t see where the little bit I might save adopting a model like [using lower-cost ATA-based solutions for general purpose applications] would be something I would need to explain if I started to have a lot more failures or slow response time on people retrieving their mail. I wouldn’t want to be saying well we saved $4,000 a box for our messaging service. I don’t feel like that would necessarily be a great career move.“ (Broadcaster – 90,000 employees, 13TBs, and 300 Servers, $1.5M annually)

3. Concerns about SATA? What are your discomforts with SATA technology?
IDC (Special Study: SerialATA Disk Drives: Impact on Enterprise Storage, December, 2003) 2 4 6 8 10
Not Familiar
Interoperability
Low Reliability
Performance & Reliability
Performance
None
Too New
# of Respondents out of 49

4. The Disk Drive Battle Ground (announced as of 9/7/2004)
Desktop ATA
Hybrid*
Traditional Enterprise
(S)ATA 5,400/7,200 rpm 5-600K MTBF
(S)ATA, FATA 5,400 – 10K rpm 1M+ MTBF
SCSI/FC/SAS 10K – 15K rpm 1M+ MTBF
*Additional cache and accelerometers may be present on Hybrid or Traditional Enterprise drives

5. The Disk Drive Battle Ground (announced as of 9/7/2004)
Desktop ATA
Hybrid*
Traditional Enterprise
DiamondMax (300GB)
Barracuda (400GB)
Deskstar (400GB) -
Caviar (250GB)
(S)ATA 5,400/7,200 rpm 5-600K MTBF
(S)ATA, FATA 5,400 – 10K rpm 1M+ MTBF
SCSI/FC/SAS 10K – 15K rpm 1M+ MTBF
*Additional cache and accelerometers may be present on Hybrid or Traditional Enterprise drives

6. The Disk Drive Battle Ground (announced as of 9/7/2004)
Desktop ATA
Hybrid*
Traditional Enterprise
DiamondMax (300GB)
Atlas (300GB)
Barracuda (400GB)
Cheetah (300GB)
Deskstar (400GB)
Ultrastar (300GB) -
Allegro (300GB)
Caviar (250GB)
(S)ATA 5,400/7,200 rpm 5-600K MTBF
(S)ATA, FATA 5,400 – 10K rpm 1M+ MTBF
SCSI/FC/SAS 10K – 15K rpm 1M+ MTBF
*Additional cache and accelerometers may be present on Hybrid or Traditional Enterprise drives

7. The Disk Drive Battle Ground (announced as of 9/7/2004)
Desktop ATA
Hybrid*
Traditional Enterprise
DiamondMax (300GB)
MaXLine (300GB)
Atlas (300GB)
Barracuda (400GB)
NL35 (500GB)
Cheetah (300GB)
Deskstar (400GB) -
Ultrastar (300GB)
Allegro (300GB)
Caviar (250GB)
Raptor/Caviar RE (73GB/250GB)
(S)ATA 5,400/7,200 rpm 5-600K MTBF
(S)ATA, FATA 5,400 – 10K rpm 1M+ MTBF
SCSI/FC/SAS 10K – 15K rpm 1M+ MTBF
*Additional cache and accelerometers may be present on Hybrid or Traditional Enterprise drives

8. Opportunities for Capacity Optimized Drives within the Tiered Storage Architecture
Data Characteristics
Data permanence
Data integrity over long haul
Response time in seconds
Could employ WORM
High Performance Storage System 1
High- Capacity, Low-Cost
(Old , X-rays, Regulatory data, etc.)
Fixed
Data 2
Data stays until next backup
Temporary staging area
Facilitate backup to tape
Facilitate rapid restore of application data
Backup
Data
High- Capacity, Low-Cost
(Whatever data that is going to get backed up to tape.)
Tape (Optical to a much less degree)
Tape by no means goes away, but its usage is refined – ARCHIVE (offsite)

9. Data Lifecycle Management and Tiered Hardware
Data could migrate back to High performance if need be
High Performance Storage System
Data could be restored from tape if need be
Fixed Content Management
Performance
Backup Facilitation Rapid Restore
Tape Archive
Age of Data/Frequency of Access

10. Clear Bifurcation in Preferences
Of the 25 million drives that are forecast to be consumed into enterprise storage solutions in 2004, just over 10% are expected to be (S)ATA, while nearly 20% of the TB are expected to (S)ATA
2004 Forecast
<100GB
>100GB
<100GB
>100GB
Traditional SCSI/FC Avg Capacity = 73GB
(S)ATA Avg. Cap = 140GB

11. High-capacity, Low-cost Storage (external only)
Revenue
Terabytes
Every major company has announced a storage system based on high-capacity, low-cost storage
Revenue generated from capacity-oriented storage systems (e.g., (S)ATA) is expected to increase from 6% ($1.4B) to nearly 30% ($7.4B) in 2008
The percent of capacity-oriented terabytes shipped in external storage for 2004 is forecast to be 11% (130K TB) and 42% (2.8M TB) in 2008 0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
2004
2006
2008
Performance
Capacity
IDC #31663, August 2004, “Worldwide Disk Storage Systems 2004–2008 Forecast and Analysis: Conservatism Persists, But Opportunities Abound”

12. External Storage and HDD Serial Interface Scenarios
FC Pureplay
Performance FC
And
High Cap, Low cost FC
SAS Backplane
10K/15K SAS
And
High Cap. SATA 2 1 3 4
SATA/FC Combo
10K/15K FC
And
High Cap. SATA
All SATA
10K/15K SATA
And
High Cap. SATA

13. Choosing the Right Interface(s)
Excerpts from IDC (Special Study: SerialATA Disk Drives: Impact on Enterprise Storage, December, 2003)
““But when it comes to the backend of a hard disk drive I don’t want to have to decide that. What I am concerned about is being able to choose between different price points and knowing what I am going to get for that.”
“…we are looking for a homogenous environment…has nothing to do with the two technologies interfacing, but more so the simplicity of the configuration.”
“From a business perspective I could care less…as long as the interface is completely superfluous to the end user…then I can care less.”
“…Floor space is a precious commodity here and my preference is that you use a chassis to its maximum [and mix drive interfaces in the same cabinet].”
“…once the technology is there we are willing to mix and match so long as there is capability.”

14. Interface Forecast 0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
IDE
SATA
Serial SCSI (SAS)
Parallel SCSI
FCAL
The vast majority of Fiber Channel drives will continue to be deployed in external storage solutions
SATA will continue to find strong adoption in external storage, as well
SAS is the natural successor to SCSI in internal storage
SAS in external storage will succeed only if SATA/SAS combination becomes popular
IDC #31208, May 2004, “Worldwide Hard Disk Drive 2004–2008 Forecast and Analysis: Better Times Upon the Industry — Is it Sustainable?”

15. WW HDDs into Enterprise Storage Revenue and Shipment Forecast
($B)
(Million)
$.0
$1.0
$2.0
$3.0
$4.0
$5.0
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008 10 20 30 40 50
Revenue
Shipments
Revenue is expected to grow at a -2.3% CAGR, though most of the revenue hit happens this year
Aggregate ASPs are forecast to decrease from over $200 in 2003 to less than $120 in 2008
Recent dynamics may improve the situation
WW HDD shipments into enterprise storage systems is forecast to increase at a 10% CAGR (this includes (S)ATA and SAS)
IDC #31208, May 2004, “Worldwide Hard Disk Drive 2004–2008 Forecast and Analysis: Better Times Upon the Industry — Is it Sustainable?”

16. Salient Takeaways
There is no place for unreliable storage in the enterprise, though companies clearly are seeking less expensive storage choices.
The move by HDD vendors to create a ‘hybrid’ drive to improve traditional desktop-class drives is a good move.
SAS will displace traditional SCSI in internal storage solutions, but the jury still is out with respect to external
SATA is definitely securing its place in external storage, but a greater choice of less expensive ATA-to-FC bridge technology will be a stiff competitor to displace
HDD revenue associated with enterprise storage solutions has a negative CAGR, but looks to turn positive in the next couple of years with expanding opportunities

17. Is Good Enough Enough? Does SATA Have the Right Stuff?
Dave Reinsel
Director, Storage Research
Is Good Enough Enough? Does SATA Have the Right Stuff?