Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What does the acronym or term SAF-TE mean?

A: SAF-TE stands for SCSI Assisted Fault Tolerant Enclosure. This is an implementation for a drive enclosure that standardized the way monitoring software receives notification of a problem with the device or contained devices. Basically, it sends all this information through the SCSI bus by implementing a normally identified SCSI device to communicate the information. Before this standard became widely used, many proprietary methods of monitoring storage hardware were used. For example, most ALR products utilized an integrated Informanager (IFM) chip, which was used to monitor fans, ambient temperature, and other enities of storage enclosures.

Note: The informanager monitoring technology used by ALR was not limited to SCSI implementations like SAF-TE.

The only Gateway external drive enclosure to have a SAF-TE processor is the Datastation 8 Ultra 2. Some of the *server backplanes actually host one of these processors as well. Normally, the operating system will detect the SAF-TE processor as a GEM (Guardian Enclosure Management) processor.

* As of the writing of this document, the 84xx, 7250R, and 7450R/935 Series servers all have SAF-TE processors integrated into their backplanes.