Course Description

This 3-day Serial Attached SCSCI (SAS) training course covers the architecture of SAS and its components.  SAS, Serial Attached SCSI is slated to become the interface of choice to meet the ever-expanding storage requirements of the enterprise with speeds that can exceed the performance of ATA, SATA, SCSI and Fibre Channel. SAS is projected to be more cost effective than Fibre Channel and to be more reliable than SATA. SAS is designed to address the issues of increased capacity, improved throughput, form factor, scalabilty and reliability that are crucial to efficient growth and operation of enterprise data centers. SAS can enhance SCSI application through put and provide easy migration from or interoperate with SATA. Live demonstrations using a LeCroy protocol analyzer enhance the discussions.

• Describe the architecture of SAS and its components
• Explain the operation of serial protocols and frame based transmission methods
• Compare and contrast the features and benefits of SAS with SCSI, SATA, ATA and Fibre Channel architectures
• Be aware how of the concepts of ports, connections, data paths and links are used in SAS architectures
• Discuss 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 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

This 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.

• 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… )