SAS Vs SATA: What is Ideal for Your Enterprise Storage Needs

It seems that the debate over SAS versus SATA for enterprise storage system has no end. While some experts are in favor of deploying SAS, others say that SATA is more compatible and adept as a storage device and as a channel. Here in this article, we’ll be addressing some important aspects associated with the debate. Readers can themselves decide what is more feasible for their storage system.

To understand the comparison better, let’s first figure out what SAS and SATA actually entail.

Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, commonly referred to as SATA, is a standard technology used to connect a hard drive or SSD to the storage system. Devices are connected point-to-point with a serial cable, which is also a mean for the host-adopters and devices to communicate. Rugged SSD is known for its fast and efficient data transfer rate. SATA disk drives are believed to be unbeatable in case a business needs large storage capacities at lower cost. And perhaps it is therefore many enterprises, especially from IMA market, have begun to opt for this technology in their tiered storage environments and near-line storage tasks. Needless to say, SATA drives are far better and perhaps easier to manage than the traditional PATA drives.     

SAS, or serial-attached SCSI, offers great benefits over parallel technologies too, especially to the businesses having substantial storage and backup demands. SAS is widely acclaimed for its reliability and performance. Both SAS and SATA drives have been considered a great alternate to SSDs, especially among small and mid-range businesses where cost of storage solutions matters a lot.

The cost of flash SSD is much higher than that of SAS technology, which is costlier than SATA. However, it is to note that I/O performance of a flash memory card is far better than that of both SATA and SAS.  When it comes to the capacity, SATA is better than SAS but cannot even stand in front of the solid state drives. 

When we compare SAS and SATA in terms of Hard Error Rate, we find that Industrial CF Card are more likely to encounter a read error than an enterprise SAS drive.

Data integrity is another important aspect a business, no matter how small or big, will address. Usually, a SATA channel faces more SDC’s (Silent Data Corruption) compared to a SAS channel. However, both of them are pretty reliable for storing and securing your data.

Well, we see that both SATA and SAS drives have their own sets of significance. You can opt for any of the two depending on your requirements and budget. As far as storage reliability is concerned, both are pretty reliable and are frequently used by small and mid-size businesses. With many companies selling SATA SSDs and SAS drives online, buying them is just a matter of few clicks.