Storage Bridge Bay Working Group

(S-B-B)

Announced on 6 March 2006, the Storage Bridge Bay Working Group (SBB Working Group) is a non-profit cooperative effort between vendors to drive standardization in entry level external storage. Dell, EMC, and LSI Logic were the initial members with Adaptec, AMCC, Aristos Logic, Astute Networks, Dot Hill Systems Corp., Neterion, RASILIENT Systmes, Seagate and Xyratex subsequently joining.

Initially, the SBB will focus on developing and distributing specifications for standardizing external disk subsystem technologies. The intent is to define mechanical and electrical interface requirements between storage arrays and the controller card that gives the array its identity. Storage technologies under review and consideration include JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks), RAID, iSCSI, Fiber Channel SAN, and NAS (Networked Attached Storage).

Any storage controller card designed to the SBB specification should be able to fit, connect, and electrically operate within a SBB-compliant storage array. Ideally, this should simplify the engineering and design process for hardware and system vendors and, perhaps, bring products to consumers quicker and at lower cost.

First quarter 2006 the specification was up to version 0.6 with the 1.0 version expected sometime during the first half of 2006 and version 2.0 about a year later in first half of 2007.

More Information

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