Serial ATA (SATA) and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Essentials

Public Training Course - Taught Live OnLine

Training Description

This Serial ATA (SATA) and Serial Attached SCSCI (SAS) technical training course covers the architecture and components of SATA and SAS. The course provides an introductory module showing why serial protocols are required for true high speed communications and discusses the equipment necessary to test, validate and troubleshoot SATA and SAS.

This online Serial ATA (SATA) and Serial Attached SCSCI (SAS) training course investigates the function and interaction of each SATA and SAS protocol layer, comparing and contrasting how SATA and SAS address the issues interference suppression, initialization techniques, resets, encoding methods, speed negotiation and clock skew management. Port multipliers, NCQ in SATA and SAS expanders, multiplexing techniques demonstrate how SATA and SAS address scalability and improved performance. Through STP, SAS interoperation with existing SATA storage environments is explored. Demonstrations with SATA/SAS analyzer software are used throughout the course to illustrate the behavior and performance of SATA and SAS.

Training Objectives

• Describe the architecture of SATA/SAS and its components
• Explain the operation of serial protocols and frame based transmission methods
• Compare and contrast the features and benefits of SATA/SAS with SCSI, ATA, USB and Fibre Channel architectures
• Be aware how of the concepts of ports, connections, data paths and links are used in SAS architectures
• Discuss SATA/SAS transmitter and receiver characteristics, jitter tolerance and cable and connector options
• Investigate the role of expanders, expander types, their operation and routing and arbitration methods used in SAS and SATA environments
• Examine in detail the function and interaction of all SATA/SAS protocol layers including initialization procedures, management services, error handling, flow control and physical layer encoding methods
• Explore in depth the use of SAS specific primitives, addressing schemes, speed negotiation and Phy reset sequences
• Develop an understanding of the operation of SMP, SSP, STP protocols in SAS and SATA applications
• Acquire testing and troubleshooting skills with a serial protocol analyzer software

Prerequisites

This technical training course is intended for hardware, software and validation engineers who are involved with designing, troubleshooting and validating SAS based products. Additionally, the course is beneficial to managers, systems engineers and technicians who are responsible for integration of SAS devices. Attendees are expected to have a good understanding of serial communications techniques and storage network methodologies.

Who Should Attend

• Technical personnel who need to develop an in-depth understanding of SAS, emphasizing the power, performance and flexibility that are required by today’s organizations. (Technical staff and managers, engineers, technicians, system administrators…)
• Non-technical personnel who wish to develop a thorough understanding of serial protocol technologies that will enhance the knowledge required for sound planning and decision-making. (Line and staff management, contract and personnel supervisors, marketing and sales employees, finance specialists… )

Training Outline

Testing Equipment Issues and Equipment Options

• Layered Protocols
• Serial switches
• Serial protocols analyzers

SATA Defined

• ATA Review
• SATA Overview
• SATA Technical Details

SAS Defined

• Introduction to SAS
• SAS architecture

SAS Devices and Connections

• SAS devices
• Connections

State Machines, Expander Operation and Zoning

• State machines
• Expander operation
• Zoning and multiplexing

SATA/SAS Physical Layers Compared

• Hardware
• Electrical characteristics
• Timing
• Initialization

SATA/SAS Phy Layer

• Encoding
• Bits, Bytes and Dwords
• OOB signals and resets
• Phy layer State machines

SATA/SAS Link Layer Protocols

• Primitives
• Clock skew management
• Error management

SATA/SAS Link layer- Identification and Resets

• Identification and resets
• SAS Connections

Link layer- SAS Arbitration and Rate Matching

• Arbitration and deadlocks
• Rate matching

SSP, SMP at the Link Layer

• SSP
• SMP

STP at the Link Layer

• STP operation

SAS SSP Port Layer

• Port layer overview

SATA/SAS Transport Layer

• SATA transport layer services
• FIS
• SSP transport layer

SATA Command Layer

• PIO
• DMA
• NCQ

SATA Extensions

• SATA-IO

• SATA II
• SATA 6Gb/s

STP,SMP Transport and Application Layers

• STP transport layer
• SMP transport layer
• SMP application layer