PCIe RAID and SSD SAS adapter 3 Gb (FC 2054; CCIN 57CD)

Overview

The PCIe-based solid-state drive (SSD) offering consists of a SAS PCIe adapter and an SSD module. The RAID and SSD SAS adapter is a double-wide, low-profile, short PCIe 8x adapter that requires two adjacent PCIe slots. You can plug one, two, or four SSD modules directly onto the adapter and avoid using any SFF or 3.5 inch SAS bays or any cabling to SAS disk enclosures.

PCIe RAID and SSD SAS Adapter 3 Gb (FC 2054) designates a low-profile PCIe adapter with a tail stock adapter for full-height slots to be used in the IBM® Power® 720 Express, IBM Power 740 Express, and IBM Power 750 Express systems.

PCIe RAID and SSD SAS Adapter 3 Gb with Blind Swap Cassette (FC 2055) designates that the PCIe adapter is in a double-wide blind swap cassette for use in a 12X-attached 5802/5877 PCIe I/O drawer.

There are multiple configuration options that provide SSD protection and redundancy. If you want redundancy at an adapter level, you can mirror the SSD module of one PCIe RAID and SSD SAS Adapter against the SSD module of another PCIe RAID and SSD SAS Adapter using the IBM AIX, IBM i, or Linux operating system. This is recommended because there is no write cache in the PCIe RAID and SSD SAS Adapter. However, the RAID 5 or RAID 6 can also be used. If you want RAID 0, you must mirror the SSD module though the operating system. Ensure that if an SSD module requires to be replaced or moved, the PCIe RAID and SSD SAS Adapter on which the SSD module is located must be removed from the server or I/O drawer before the SSD module can be accessed. This action is different from the existing 69 GB SSD configurations, which can use the SAS bay hot-plug capability to remove and replace a single SSD module without removing the associated PCI SAS adapter.

For the AIX and Linux operating systems, if you do not want to have PCIe RAID and SSD SAS Adapter redundancy, but still want to protect the SSD module content, the PCIe RAID and SSD SAS Adapter can provide RAID 5 or RAID-6 level protection on the PCIe adapter. RAID 10 is not supported for the PCIe RAID and SSD SAS adapter. Hot-spare capability can optionally be used with RAID 5 but the spare SSD module must be on that same PCIe RAID and SSD SAS adapter.

The following figure shows the adapter.

Figure 1. PCIe Dual - x4 3 Gb SAS RAID Adapter

For details about slot priorities and placement rules, see the PCI adapter placement topic collection for your system.

Specifications

Item

Description

Adapter FRU number

Low-profile FRU 74Y6406

Full height FRU 74Y6409

(Designed to comply with RoHS requirement.)

SSD Module (CCIN 58B2) FRU number

1.8 inch 177 GB small form factor solid-state drive on PCIe SAS RAID and SSD adapter.

FRU 43W7749

I/O bus architecture

PCIe x8

Slot requirement

Two PCIe x8 slots per adapter. (The adapter physically plugs into one slot and covers the adjacent slot to the left.)

Cables

No cables required.

Voltage

3.3 V

Form factor

Short

Maximum number

For the maximum adapters supported, see the PCI adapter placement topic collection for your system.

Attributes

• The PCIe adapter and its associated SSD modules are supported in the , IBM Power 720 Express, IBM Power 740 Express, and IBM Power 750 Express system units or in the feature 5802 and 5877 12X PCIe I/O drawers when attached to the IBM Power 720 Express, IBM Power 740 Express, or IBM Power 750 Express.
• The adapter is not supported in the IBM Power 770 and IBM Power 780 system units. It is not supported in the 12X-attached feature 5803 and 5873 PCIe I/O drawers. It is not supported on POWER6® servers.
• Each RAID formatted (528 byte blocks) SSD module provides up to 177 GB of capacity in the IBM AIX, IBM i, or Linux environment. Modules can also be formatted as just a bunch of disks (JBOD) (512 byte blocks) and provide up to 200 GB of capacity in an AIX and Linux environment. Formatting for RAID provides additional data integrity and the option to use RAID 0 (when SSD modules are mirrored at the operating system level), RAID 5, or RAID 6.

Operating system or partition requirements

If you are installing a new feature, ensure that you have the software that is required to support the new feature and that you determine whether there are any prerequisites for this feature and attaching devices. To check for the prerequisites, see IBM Prerequisite website .

Cables

None