Sending command to SAS devices

[Rafael Machado <rafaelrodrigues.machado@gmail.com>]

Hi everyone

I'm trying to send a command to a SAS (serial attached scsi) storage device
to retrieve some SMART information, but I'm facing some problems that maybe
you can give me some light.

During a research about how does the SAS devices work I faced this
specification: http://www.t10.org/members/w_sat4.htm.
My hope was to have a SCSI or ATA protocol attached to this device /
controller, so I could create a SAT library and would be able to end a ATA
command over the SCSI protocol, or a SCSI command over a ATA protocol (not
sure about the correct option yet).

After checking the handles created on this device I had a terrible surprise.
No ATA_PASS_THRU protocol instance was created to it, and no
SCSI_EXT_PASS_THRU protocol instance was created too.

My questions are:

Does anyone ever worked with SAS devices and had success with it?
In case I really need to do that, seems I would need to create a SAS
controller driver so I could send the command to the correct device. Am I
right about this?
Any other idea?

Thanks and Regards
Rafael R. Machado