Announcing SAS SANs for Dummies book, LSI edition

There is a new (free) book that I’m a co-author of along Bruce Grieshaber and Larry Jacob (both of LSI) along with foreword by Harry Mason of LSI and President of the SCSI Trade Association titled SAS SANs for Dummies compliments of LSI.

This new book (ebook and print hard copy) looks at Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and how it can be used beyond traditional direct attached storage (DAS) configurations for support various types of storage mediums including SSD, HDD and tape. These configuration options include as entry-level SAN with SAS switches for small clusters or server virtualization, or as shared DAS as well as being a scale out back-end solution for NAS, object, cloud and big data storage solutions.

Here is the table of contents (TOC) of SAS SANs for Dummies

Chapter 1: Data storage challenges

Storage Growth Demand Drivers

Recognizing Challenges

Solutions and Opportunities

Chapter 2: Storage Area Networks

Introducing Storage Area Networks

Moving from Dedicated Internal to Shared Storage

Chapter 3: SAS Basics

Introducing the Basics of SAS

How SAS Functions

Components of SAS

SAS Target Devices

SAS for SANs

Chapter 4: SAS Usage Scenarios

Understanding SAS SANs Usage

Shared SAS SANs Scenarios including:

SAS in HPC environments
Big data and big bandwidth
Database, e-mail, back-office
NAS and object storage servers
Cloud, wen and high-density
Server virtualization

Chapter 5: Advanced SAS Topics

The SAS Physical Layer

Choosing SAS Cabling

Using SAS Switch Zoning

SAS HBA Target Mode

Chapter 6: Nine Common Questions

Can You Interconnect Switches?

What Is SAS Cable Distance?

How Many Servers Can Be In a SAS SAN?

How Do You Manage SAS Zones?

How Do You Configure SAS for HA?

How Does SAS Zoning Compare to LUN Mapping?

Who Has SAS Solutions?

How Do SAS SANs Compare?

Where Can You Learn More?

Chapter 7: Next Steps

SAS Going Forward

Next Steps

Great Take Away’s

Regardless of if you are looking to use SAS as a primary SAN interface, or leverage it for DAS or implementing back-end storage for big-data, NAS, object, cloud or other types of scalable storage solutions, check out and get your free copy of SAS SANs for Dummies here compliments of LSI.

Click here to ask your free copy of SAS SANs for Dummies compliments of LSI, tell them Greg from StorageIO sent you and enjoy the book.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

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