SCSI Trade Association Holds Sixth Plugfest at UNH-IOL

April 24-28 Plugfest Features Largest Fabric Build to Date

San Francisco, May 22, 2006 – SCSI Trade Association (STA), a member-run industry association established to support and promote SCSI technology, and the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), announced today that the sixth Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) plugfest was held April 24-28. The tests emphasized large system builds and the performance of fabrics during attempts to disrupt the data flow. Fifteen STA members attended the plugfest (see page two for a list of the attending members).

The highlight of the plugfest was the array of large system builds (of which there were several), configured as the largest, most complex fabric to date. The system builds contained many servers, enclosures, HBAs, expanders, analyzers, hard disk drives, tape drives, and an active multiplexer (MUX), provided by the attending vendors. All of the large builds were stable configurations and were successfully tested by hot-plugging and swapping drives. These tests verified that broadcast change notifications did not disrupt the fabric which would cause the system to stop transferring data.

“This SAS plugfest continued with the previous efforts of implementing and testing large system builds, by rolling in new or revised components and making sure they withstand the various error situations they are likely to encounter in the field,” stated Harry Mason, President of STA and Director of Industry Marketing at LSI Logic. “Of particular significance was the amount of error injection testing that we applied to the SAS fabric. As SAS systems grow in size, relative to traditional SCSI environments, it’s crucial that the fabric continue to function under all error situations. The staff at UNH-IOL was instrumental in devising many of the test scripts and environments. Their facilities and expertise were essential to the plugfest’s success.”

“It’s very exciting to see how SAS technology has matured” said David Woolf, UNH-IOL senior research and development engineer. “At past plugfests we’ve been able to build some pretty impressive large fabrics, but we didn’t have the time to test their stability and robustness. This time we did so, because of how quickly we were able to build the fabric, which in itself is a testament to how mature SAS has become at every level. I was impressed at how stable each large build configuration was throughout the power cycles, hot plugs and drive swaps we did.”

SAS market entry is the result of four years of preparation; including development of the SAS technology, finalizing and standardization of the specifications, testing, and finally the anticipated introduction of complete SAS storage systems last fall. Testing for SAS component interoperability during development and early product introductions has virtually eliminated interoperability and compatibility problems. An additional plugfest is planned for fourth quarter.

About STA
The SCSI Trade Association was established in 1995 to provide a focal point for members to communicate the benefits of SCSI to the industry. Today, STA promotes the understanding and use of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) technology and influences the evolution of SAS standards to meet future industry needs. STA has a nine-member Board of Directors that oversees the Marketing Communications and Technology Committees and all STA activities. To subscribe to Serial Storage Wire, STA’s free SAS newsletter, please visit: www.serialstoragewire.org. For more information, please visit the STA web site at www.scsita.org, send an email to info@scsita.org or call the STA office at 415-561-6273.

About UNH-IOL
Established in 1988, the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) leads the industry in neutral third-party interoperability and conformance testing for data communications companies. For more information, visit the UNH-IOL website at: www.iol.unh.edu.

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