STA Advances SCSI Express Initiative for Products Coming in 2013

The SCSI Trade Association (STA) announced the advancement of the SCSI Express initiative, targeted at databases, virtual servers and online transactional applications that require lower latency from critical data storage.

           Co-existence of SAS and SCSI Express

Combining the SCSI storage interface protocol with the PCIe computer expansion bus standard, SCSI Express provides a foundation for innovation of enterprise data storage and increased performance while extending investments in existing SCSI-based storage technology.

"With the increased adoption of SSDs in data centers, there has emerged a need to design a storage interface suitable for high performance and lower latency," said Marty Czekalski, president of STA and Interface and Emerging Architecture Program manager, Seagate Technology. "The SCSI protocol is the logical foundation for all modern storage systems, and SCSI Express provides a way of transporting SCSI over PCIe in a standardized fashion."

Built for Co-Existence of SAS, SATA and SCSI Express
SCSI Express is a standardized interface definition comprised of several open industry storage standards and specifications. In addition to supporting the SCSI standard itself, SCSI Express utilizes two standards developed by the INCITS T10 Technical Committee: SCSI over PCIe (SOP) and a PCIe Queuing Interface (PQI). Implementing these standards with a serviceable, hot-pluggable drive bay known as Express Bay allows for multiple storage devices built on storage protocols such as SAS, Multi-Link SAS, SATA and SCSI Express to seamlessly coexist.

"The SCSI Express initiative applies the time-tested SCSI standard to PCIe-based storage devices," said Jim Handy of market analyst firm Objective Analysis. "This implies that SCSI Express should share the strengths of the SCSI ecosystem’s HA to provide users low downtime while supporting backwards compatibility to protect the existing investment in today’s datacenters."

STA member companies are working with the INCITS T10 Technical Committee to release the SOP and PQI standards so that products can be delivered to market in 2013. In addition, an open source Linux driver is scheduled for availability in the first quarter of 2013.