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write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts,

ID: 3724896 • Letter: W

Question

write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

SCSI is an acronym for small computer system interface. It is the ability to use different structure of hard drives where the access of the hard drive is not restricted to only one interface. The SCSI has been around for a long time. It was popular in the 1980s and has been used for quite some time.

RAID, or redundant array of inexpensive disks, is used a lot now, and the technology is used in conjunction with virtual machines (VMs). RAID is used with virtualization software. You create virtual machines out of one physical machine by taking advantage of RAID. The RAID idea has been implemented in today’s computer architecture and organization.

Discuss the following questions and topics related to interface communications:

Explain when you would use a SCSI drive.

When you would have a need to use RAID? Explain.

What is the difference between IDE (integrated drive electronics) and SATA (serial advanced technology attachment)?

Compare and contrast the different types of buses in a computer architecture. What are the uses for them?

Explanation / Answer

Q1. Explain when you would use a SCSI drive.

SCSI say "scuzzy", the Small Computer System Interface is a set of electronic interfaces that allow personal computers to communicate with peripheral hardware like disk drives, tape drives, CD-ROM drives, printers and scanners faster and more flexibly than previous parallel data transfer interfaces.

All devices not support all levels of SCSI, SCSI standards, an older peripheral device is attached to a newer computer with support for a later standard the older device will work at the older and slower data rate. In personal computing, SCSI interfaces have been replaced, for the most part, by Universal Serial Bus (USB). In the enterprise, SCSI is still used in server farms for hard drive controllers.

There are several components used in SCSI storage systems such as

An initiator issues requests for service by the SCSI device and receives responses. Initiators come in a variety of forms and may be integrated into a server’s system board or exist within a host bus adapter. ISCSI connectivity typically uses a software-based initiator.

A SCSI target is typically a physical storage device (although software-based SCSI targets also exist). The target can be a hard disk or an entire storage array. It is also possible for non-storage hardware to function as a SCSI target. Although rare today, it was once common for optical scanners to be attached to computers through the SCSI bus and to act as SCSI targets.

Service delivery subsystem is a mechanism that allows communication to occur between the initiator and the target; it usually takes the form of cabling.

Expander is only used with serial-attached SCSI (SAS); allows multiple SAS devices to share a single initiator port.

Current SCSI technologies can transfer up to 640 megabytes per second (MBps).

Q2. When you would have a need to use RAID? Explain.

RAID, redundant array of independent disks is a way of storing the same data in different places on multiple hard disks to protect data in the case of a drive failure.

RAID works by placing data on multiple disks and allowing input/output operations to overlap in a balanced way, improving performance. Because the use of multiple disks increases the mean time between failures (MTBF), storing data redundantly also increases fault tolerance.

RAID arrays appear to the operating system (OS) as a single logical hard disk. RAID employs the techniques of disk mirroring or disk striping. The Mirroring copies identical data onto more than one drive. Striping partitions each drive's storage space into units ranging from a sector (512 bytes) up to several megabytes. The stripes of all the disks are interleaved and addressed in order.

Q3. What is the difference between IDE (integrated drive electronics) and SATA (serial advanced technology attachment)?

IDE and SATA are different types of interfaces to connect storage devices like hard drives to a computer's system bus. SATA stands for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (or Serial ATA) and IDE is also called Parallel ATA or PATA. SATA is the newer standard and SATA drives are faster than PATA (IDE) drives. For many years ATA provided the most common and the least expensive interface for this application. But now SATA had largely replaced IDE in all new systems.

IDE versus SATA comparison:

Advantages:

IDE: Maximum compatibility

SATA: Inexpensive, large storage capacity.

Disadvantages:

IDE: Lacks support for new technology such as native command queuing and hot-plugging hard drives

SATA: Lower MTBF than SAS (700,000 hours to 1.2 million hours of use at 25 °C), less suited for servers.

Hot plugging:

IDE: IDE interface does not support hot plugging

SATA: SATA interface supports hot plugging

Speed:

IDE: data transfers at the rate of up to 133MB/s

SATA: Data transfers at the rate of up to 6 Gb/s

Data cable:

IDE: Ribbon-like, wide, can be up to 18 inches long

SATA: Narrow, can be up to a meter (roughly 3ft) long. Power and data split into two connections.

Lineage:

IDE: Superseded by SATA

SATA: Supersedes Parallel ATA (PATA) aka IDE

Jumpers:

IDE: In a computer system, it's possible to have more than one harddrive. To connect multiple IDE drives, need to chain the ribbon cables from one to the next. The computer system has no idea which is the main drive, from which to load the OS.

SATA: SATA drives don't use jumpers. Each drive connects directly to the motherboard. To set the primary drive, can access the settings from the computers BIOS.

Q4. Compare and contrast the different types of buses in a computer architecture. What are the uses for them?

There are many internal components inside the computers and these components to communicate with each other make use of wires that are known as a ‘bus’. A bus is a common pathway through which information flows from one computer component to another.

Summary of functions of buses in computers are

Data sharing: All types of buses found in a computer transfer data between the computer peripherals connected to it. The buses transfer or send data in either serial or parallel method of data transfer. This allows for the exchange of 1, 2, 4 or even 8 bytes of data at a time. (A byte is a group of 8 bits). Buses are classified depending on how many bits they can move at the same time, which means that we have 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit or even 64-bit buses.

Addressing: A bus has address lines, which match those of the processor and this allows data to be sent to or from specific memory locations.

Power: A bus supplies power to various peripherals connected to it.

Timing: The bus provides a system clock signal to synchronize the peripherals attached to it with the rest of the system. The expansion bus facilitates easy connection of more or additional components and devices on a computer such as a TV card or sound card.

Computers have two major types of buses these are

System bus: This is the bus that connects the CPU to main memory on the motherboard. The system bus is also called the front-side bus, memory bus, local bus, or host bus.

A number of I/O Buses, (I/O is an acronym for input / output), connecting various peripheral devices to the CPU. These devices connect to the system bus via a ‘bridge’ implemented in the processors chipset. Other names for the I/O bus include “expansion bus", "external bus” or “host bus”.