PCIe Dual - x4 3Gb SAS RAID Adapter (FC 5903; CCIN 574E)

Overview

The PCI Express (PCIe) Dual - x4 3Gb SAS RAID Adapter supports the attachment of Serial attached SCSI (SAS) disk and SAS solid-state drives using a pair of mini SAS 4x connectors. The 5903 has a 380 MB write cache and a concurrently replaceable cache battery pack. The adapter must always be installed in pairs and is always to be used in a high availability, multi-initiator RAID configuration using two adapters in dual-controller mode. Two 5903 adapters provide mirrored write-cache data and mirrored RAID parity footprints between the adapters. If the 5903 pairing is broken, then write cache is disabled.

The 5903 supports SAS small form factor (SFF) disk drives located in a PCIe 12X I/O Drawer or SAS disk drives located in an EXP 12S Disk Drawer. It can also be connected to the internal disk drives in the system unit using the appropriate split disk backplane feature and cabling.

The adapter is a 3.3 V, PCI-e x8 bootable SAS adapter that supports RAID levels 0, 5, 6, and 10. 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. Under the IBM® i operating system, mirroring and data spreading is provided by the operating system and RAID 5 and RAID 6 is provided by the adapter.

With proper cabling and configuration, multiple wide ports are used to provide redundant paths to each dual port SAS drive or solid-state drive. The adapter manages SAS path redundancy and path switching should a SAS failure occur.

Specifications

Item

Description

Adapter FRU number

44V8581 / 46K4735 / 46K6111 (Designed to comply with RoHS requirement.)

Battery FRU number

44V7597 (Designed to comply with RoHS requirement.)

I/O bus architecture

PCIe x8

Slot requirement

One PCIe x8 slot per adapter.

Adapters are installed in pairs.

Adapter pairs do not need to be in the same enclosure. For higher availability, place adapters in separate enclosures. See the PCI adapter placement for machine types 82xx and 91xx for placement rules.

Cables

When you attach 5886 EXP 12S Disk Drawer, at least one of the following SAS (X) cables must be used: 3661, 3662 or 3663.

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

3.3V

Form factor

Short

Maximum number

Refer to the PCI adapter placement for machine types 82xx and 91xx.

Attributes

• 48 SAS disk dives supported when the adapter is configured with four 5886 EXP 12S Disk Drawers
• 42 SAS disk drives supported when the adapter is configured with a 19-inch PCIe 12X I/O Drawer and two 5886 EXP 12S Disk Drawers (18 SFF disk drives plus up to 24 SAS disk drives)
• SAS speed: 3 Gbs
• SAS Serial-SCSI Protocol (SSP) and Serial Management Protocol (SMP) are supported
• 380 MB of non-volatile fast write cache can increase disk subsystem performance
• Dual controller supports mirrored-write cache data and mirrored-RAID parity footprints
• Concurrent firmware update supported
• Eight physical links from two mini SAS 4x connectors are provided
• Solid state drives (SSDs) supported
• Concurrent replaceable cache battery pack
• Removable media devices are not supported

Operating system or partition requirements

• AIX:
  • AIX 5L™ Version 5.3 with the 5300-07 Technology Level and Service Pack 8, or later
  • AIX 5L Version 5.3 with the 5300-08 Technology Level and Service Pack 6, or later
  • AIX 5L Version 5.3 with the 5300-09 Technology Level and Service Pack 2, or later
  • AIX 5L Version 5.3 with the 5300-10 Technology Level, or later
  • AIX 6.1 and Service Pack 8, or later
  • AIX Version 6.1 with the 6100-01 Technology Level and Service Pack 4, or later
  • AIX Version 6.1 with the 6100-02 Technology Level and Service Pack 3, or later
  • AIX Version 6.1 with the 6100-03 Technology Level, or later
• Linux:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 4, with update 7, or later
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5, with update 2, or later
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, with service pack 2, or later
• IBM i
  • IBM i 6.1.1 and Resave A, or later

If you are installing a new feature, ensure that you have the software required to support the new feature and that you determine if there are any existing prerequisites. To do this, use the IBM Prerequisite Web site at http://www-912.ibm.com/e_dir/eServerPrereq.nsf .