PCIe Dual - x4 SAS Adapter (FC 5901; CCIN 57B3)

Overview

The PCI Express (PCIe) Dual - 4x SAS adapter is a low-profile short form factor adapter for high-performance and high-density, serial attached SCSI (SAS) applications. It supports the attachment of SAS disk, tape, and DVD by using a pair of mini SAS 4x connectors which allow the eight physical links to be used in various narrow and wide-port configurations. The adapter does not have write cache.

The adapter is a 64 bit, 3.3 V, bootable SAS adapter that provides RAID 0, 5, 6, and 10 capability. Some RAID level support is operating system dependent. The adapter provides RAID 0, RAID 5, RAID 6, and RAID 10 for the AIX® and Linux operating systems. IBM® i operating system provides mirroring and data spreading capability. FC 5901 does not support the RAID 5 and RAID 6 configurations. The adapter does not have write cache. (The write performance of RAID 5 and RAID 6 can be poor on adapters that do not provide write cache. Consider using an adapter which provides write cache when using RAID 5 or RAID 6.)

The 5901 supports SAS SFF disk drives located in a PCIe 12X I/O Drawer or SAS disk drives located in an EXP 12S Disk Drawer or SAS disk drives located in a supported POWER® system unit (split disk backplane).

Specifications

Item

Description

Adapter FRU number

44V4852 (Designed to comply with RoHS requirement)

I/O bus architecture

PCIe

Slot requirement

One available PCIe x8 slot

Cables

SAS device attachment requires specific cables that are provided with the subsystem or device features being attached. Special cabling is required for multi-initiator and high availability configurations. See Serial attached SCSI cable planning.

Voltage

3.3 V

Form factor

Short, low-profile

Maximum number

For details about the maximum number of adapters that are supported, see PCIe adapter placement rules and slot priorities and select the system you are working on.

Attributes

• Two external mini SAS 4x connectors provide attachment of SAS and Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) device enclosures
• SAS Serial SCSI Protocol (SSP), Serial ATA Tunneling Protocol (STP), and Serial Management Protocol (SMP)
• RAID 0, 5, 6, 10

  The write performance of RAID 5 and RAID 6 can be poor on adapters that do not provide write cache. Consider using an adapter that provides write cache when using RAID 5 or RAID 6.

• Concurrent firmware update
• Removable media device supported (Removable media is not supported in multi-initiator and high availability configurations)
• Removable media device supported
• 440 - 500 Mhz PowerPC® (PPC)
• Support for multi-initiator and high availability configurations

For details about slot priorities and placement rules, see PCIe adapter placement rules and slot priorities and select the system you are working on.

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 any prerequisites must be met for this feature and attaching devices. To check for the prerequisites, see IBM Prerequisite website.