What is SCSI?

SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) technology allows you to attach various internal and external devices to a single controller card in your computer. These standards define commands, protocols, electrical, and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it can be used for a range of other devices, such as scanners, CDs, and DVDs. A typical SCSI configuration consists of the following items: A SCSI host adapter (or controller) that plugs into a slot in your computer's motherboard. Internal and/or external SCSI devices (such as hard drives, CD-ROM, DVD, scanner). Internal and/or external SCSI cables, SCSI terminators, and possibly SCSI cable adapters.
SCSI Setup :

SCSI interfaces : The first, still very common, was parallel SCSI which uses a parallel electrical bus design. The different types of Parallel SCSI interfaces , the speed at which the data can transfer and the number of devices which could be connected to the parallel SCSI are all listed below
Interface SCSI-1 Fast SCSI Alternative Narrow SCSI Bandwidth (MB/s) [9] 5 MB/s 10 MB/s Devices 8 8

16 Fast-Wide SCSI Ultra SCSI Fast-20 20 MB/s 20 MB/s 8 16 Ultra Wide SCSI Ultra2 SCSI Fast-40 40 MB/s 40 MB/s 8 16 Ultra2 Wide SCSI Ultra3 SCSI Ultra-320 SCSI Ultra-640 SCSI Ultra-160; Fast-80 wide Ultra-4; Fast160 Ultra-5 80 MB/s 160 MB/s 320 MB/s 640 MB/s 16 16 16

All the below three protocols are versions of SCSI Serial Storage Architecture (SSA), SCSI-over-Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP), Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) As of 2008, parallel SCSI is being replaced by Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), which uses a serial design but retains other aspects of the technology

The following table illustrates the main differences in properties between SAS and SCSI interfaces:

Parallel SCSI vs SAS Parallel SCSI Architecture SAS

Parallel, all devices connected to shared Serial, point-to-point, discrete bus. signal paths. Port expander1 used for fan-out. Max speed 640 MB/sec (Ultra-640 SCSI). Performance degrades as devices added to shared bus. Speed shared across the entire multi-drop bus. 3.0 GB/sec, roadmap to 12.0 GB/sec. Performance is maintained as more drives are added.

Performance

Scalability

Number of devices per cable limited by Up to 128 devices. 16,384 SCSI IDs to 8 or 16 devices on a single devices with fan-out expander. channel Compatible with Serial ATA (SATA).

Compatibility Incompatible with all other drive interfaces. Max. Cable Length Cable Form Factor Hot Plug ability

12 meters total. Can use SCSI repeaters 8 meters per discrete to exceed this limit but they are connection; total domain expensive. cabling thousands of feet. Multitude of conductors adds bulk an cost. Not optimized. Some care required. Compact connectors and cabling save space and cost. Yes. Worldwide unique ID set at time of manufacture uniquely identifies devices; no user action required. Discrete signal paths enable devices to include termination by default; no user action required.

Device Manually set; user must ensure no ID Identification number conflicts on bus.

Termination

Manually set; user must ensure proper installation and functionality of terminators.

The SAS bus operates point-to-point while the SCSI bus is multidrop. Each SAS device is connected by a dedicated link to the initiator, unless an expander is used. If one initiator is connected to one target, there is no opportunity for contention; with parallel SCSI, even this situation could cause contention. SAS has no termination issues and does not require terminator packs like parallel SCSI. SAS supports up to 65,535 devices through the use of expanders, while Parallel SCSI has a limit of 8 or 16 devices on a single channel. SAS supports a higher transfer speed (3 or 6 Gbit/s) than most parallel SCSI standards. SAS achieves these speeds on each initiator-target connection, hence getting higher throughput, whereas parallel SCSI shares the speed across the entire multidropbus. SAS controllers may support connecting to SATA devices, either directly connected using native SATA protocol or through SAS expanders using SATA Tunneled Protocol (STP). Both SAS and parallel SCSI use the SCSI command-set.