The Data Center, HotHardware's new community for IT professionals, is sponsored by Dell's Future of Storage. This article is part of our ongoing series of topics and discussions related to IT, Enterprise Storage and related storage technologies.

Today, we’ll be showcasing one of the most significant developments to date, toward getting SAS (Serial-Attached SCSI) more frequently into the vernaculars of workstation/server buyers and maybe even a few enthusiasts - relatively cheap, high-capacity SAS storage – thanks to Seagate.  Seagate currently offers 10,000 and 15,000 RPM disks with SAS interfaces at a fraction of the capacity versus SATA offerings and as such, much higher prices.

However, Seagate just launched their Barracuda ES.2 platform with a SAS interface that offers capacities up to 1 Terabyte (1 TB). Not only is the Barracuda ES.2 the highest capacity SAS disk to date, it’s also the first SAS disk we’ve seen on the market with a 7,200 RPM spindle speed and SATA-like pricing.

Seagate's Barracuda ES.2 1TB SAS Hard Drive

LOL seems pointless to me the cost/performance average is so minimal and specialized it makes no point. Get twice the sata drives and memory for the same price and have better as well as a wider performance spectrum with the same additional costs for controllers. This is where ssd's come in they average a 60-80% performance increase over sata for right around the same amount of storage cap. as a SATA drive. I would say 40-65% performance increase over a SCSI drive with a pretty close price margin I would go sata drives twice the capacity and 1/4-1/3% more memory for storage and ssd for my lower storage (speed) amount drives and run it in raid. Therefore for the same rough cost amount I at least double response times and storage times with the memory overhead thrown in for the same (roughly) price margin.dont I?

Okay this review tops it. So you claim the advantage of the drive is so that you can mix and match high perf 15/10k SAS drives with high capacity 7.2k drives.  This is dumb. SAS controllers support SATA drives - how do you think server integrators (look at recent dell poweredge servers eg R900) fit SATA drives with SAS drives?

let's have a look at good ol' wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA 

The current SATA specification can support data transfer rates as high as 3.0 Gbit/s per device. SATA uses only 4 signal lines; cables are more compact and cheaper than for PATA. SATA supports hot-swapping and NCQ. There is a special connector (eSATA) specified for external devices, and an optionally implemented provision for clips to hold internal connectors firmly in place. SATA drives may be plugged into Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) controllers and communicate on the same physical cable as native SAS disks, but SATA controllers cannot handle SAS disks.

So you just reviewed one of the most useless products i've recently seen. Or you missed the point. I think probably the latter. There must be something different about this drive compared to the SATA one, and it can't just be the connector. Or maybe it is, and they are actually the same drive with the only difference being it takes a SAS connector but does not actually use SCSI commands?

 Brendan

 edit :

LOL seems pointless to me the cost/performance average is so minimal and specialized it makes no point. Get twice the sata drives and memory for the same price and have better as well as a wider performance spectrum with the same additional costs for controllers. This is where ssd's come in they average a 60-80% performance increase over sata for right around the same amount of storage cap. as a SATA drive. I would say 40-65% performance increase over a SCSI drive with a pretty close price margin I would go sata drives twice the capacity and 1/4-1/3% more memory for storage and ssd for my lower storage (speed) amount drives and run it in raid. Therefore for the same rough cost amount I at least double response times and storage times with the memory overhead thrown in for the same (roughly) price margin.dont I?

Ok you have never used 15k scsi drives have you?  They beat traditional 7.2k SATA drives by an enormous margin. They beat raptor/velociraptors by a fair bit too. SSD's have awesome access times but in raw read/write speeds they are still really slow compared to old SCSI tech. Where do you get the 60-80% perf increase from SATA to SSD? that's completely made up, look at a review :

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2982&p=5

ok this is a slow old tech SSD, but the new ones aren't better by miles. 

Seems like this is a drive for the set where the boss won't let you buy a SATA drive and forces you to buy the more expensive 1TB SAS drive. I assume as with most exterprise hardware you get the full enterprise warranty.

 What I want to know is if there is any difference in using the SATA version or the SAS one. Considering that both can be plugged into a SAS raid controller I would think that a test of each drive on the same controller in single and raid configuration would be a real test of whether the drives are actually any different.

audumla:

 What I want to know is if there is any difference in using the SATA version or the SAS one. Considering that both can be plugged into a SAS raid controller I would think that a test of each drive on the same controller in single and raid configuration would be a real test of whether the drives are actually any different.

difference is in the warranty and a lot of SAS drives are 10,000 rpm not 7200rpm like this one. I guess if you want sheer capacity you have to make due with less performance. 

Heya Aud,

First, welcome to the forums here. If you look at the article, there are some comparison tests, each drive on its own native controller, SATA and SAS:

http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Seagate_Barracuda_ES2_SAS_1_TB_/

The base drive platform is indentical though, except for the interface.  I'll ask our editor to chime in here with his thoughts too though.

Thanks!

The only real differences between SAS and SATA interfaces is that SAS supports longer cable length, 10 meters vs 1 meter for SATA, and that SAS drives are mostly 10k or 15k RPM (thus much louder). SATA drives can be used with SAS controllers, but not the other way around. Both interfaces offer the same speed, although SAS interface spec uses higher voltage due to the increase max cable length. I've also never seen hot-swap SATA controllers, but it's pretty common for higher end servers to have hot-swappable SAS controllers.

 SATA doesn't mean that the drive is a desktop drive, there are plenty of enteprise SATA drives which are usually 2.5 inches rather than the standard 3.5 for PCs.

 Anyway, my thinking for why Seagate is releasing these drives is because it's not much more expensive to produce them over the SATA versions and it looks better to the CTO/CIO being a SAS rather than a SATA drive. :) Maybe the cable lenght limit of SATA has something to do with it also.