Managing Access Control Through SAS Zoning

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Abstract
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is gaining popularity in small storage area network (SAN) server environments. SAS has gained significant interest as a mechanism for connecting large groups of targets in small SAN or in cluster or blade server environments and allowing these servers to share resources across their targets. With SAS’s rise in popularity comes the need to segregate and manage device traffic by zones in a similar fashion to what is already done in larger Fibre Channel networks or Ethernet using virtual LANs. This paper discusses how SAS zoning, as proposed to the T10 Technical Committee of the INCITS SAS 2 working group, can meet these zoning and access control needs. SAS zoning provides functionality for traffic segregation, resource flexibility, controlled resource sharing, topology control, and protection against unauthorized access. This paper includes an overview of SAS zoning operation and implementation, and a discussion of how zoning enables the management of SAS-based blade servers, which support both enterprise-class applications with SAS HDDs and near-line/fixed content storage requirements with SATA HDDs.

About PMC
PMC-Sierra™ is a leading provider of high speed broadband communications and storage semiconductors and MIPS-Powered™ processors for Enterprise, Access, Metro Optical Transport, Storage Area Networking and Wireless network equipment. The company offers worldwide technical and sales support, including a network of offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia. The company is publicly traded on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the PMCS symbol and is included in the S&P 500 Index.

About the Authors
Dr. Heng Liao is a Principal Engineer and the chief architect for PMC-Sierra’s SAS Expander Products in the Enterprise Storage Product Division (ESD). Prior to joining PMC-Sierra, Dr. Liao was a Post-doctoral Research Associate at Princeton University and studied various parallel processor architecture and compiler techniques. Dr Liao has over 8 years of experience in the storage and communication IC industry and has worked in various design roles. Dr. Liao holds a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Computer Engineering from the Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Dr. Liao has over 18 US and international patents pending or awarded in the field of communication systems, switching techniques, micro-architectures, and storage systems.

Tim Symons is a Principal Engineer and Storage architect at PMC-Sierra. Prior to joining PMCSierra, Mr. Symons was a Storage Systems Architect and Technologist with Adaptec Inc. (formerly Eurologic Systems). Mr. Symons has a Bachelor of Science (Honors) degree inElectrical & Electronic Engineering from the University of Plymouth, UK.

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