End of the road for 3.5 inch, fibre channel

Smaller form factor disks and the serial attached SCSI (SAS) interface are set to become the norm in storage this year, according to Seagate.

John Bornholdt of Seagate Technology told attendees of Compellent's C-Drive customer conference in Minneapolis that SAS is the storage tech interface of the future.

Bornholdt predicted that fibre channel would shrink in market share, mostly because of gains by SAS. "We do see the end of the fibre channel in our roadmaps," he said. "SAS is really becoming the interface of the future in enterprise storage."

This year, the SAS interface accounted for about 48 per cent of the market, which Bornholdt predicted would increase to 57 per cent by 2010.

But he admitted that the technology still has some technical issues to be worked out before it takes over the market, including expanding to support NAS.

Bornholdt also said the beginning of next year would mark the tipping point for 2.5 inch drives becoming the norm over 3.5 inch drives in the mission critical enterprise storage space. He said the new 300 gigabyte models - which Seagate is releasing at the end of this year - is the key capacity for critical mass.

The smaller form factor means an increased air flow, making it easier to cool the systems. They also require about a quarter less power and create less heat, Bornholdt explained.

Server OEMs are already predominately using the 2.5 inch disks, he said, but storage vendors will start switching this year, with the majority crossed over within the next three years.

This year, 56 per cent of mission critical enterprise storage is on 3.5 inch drives, with 43 per cent on the 2.5 inch drives. By 2011, 2.5 inch drives will have an 84 per cent market share, and solid state drives will have a six per cent share.

Indeed, Borholdt predicted solid state disks would start to make more of a showing in the enterprise market, but said it would be quite some time before it made financial sense. "I don't believe solid state will ever take over from rotating media across the board," he said, noting that capacity and price will keep other forms more popular.

He said the hard drive industry shipped about 144 million units last year, and the enterprise market alone saw nine per cent growth. According to its own statistics, Seagate is the enterprise market leader, with about a 58 per cent share.