Users Guide

Table Of Contents
Enclosures And Backplanes
Physical disks can be contained in an enclosure or attached to the backplane of a system. An enclosure is attached to the
system externally while the backplane and its physical disks are internal.
Topics:
Backplanes
Enclosures
Enclosure Management
Identifying An Open Connector On The Enclosure
Enclosure Components
Backplanes
You can view the Backplane object by expanding the controller in the Storage Management tree view. Storage Management
displays the status of the backplane and the attached physical disks. Backplane is similar to an enclosure. In a Backplane,
the controller connector and physical disks are attached to the enclosure, but it does not have the management features
(temperature probes, alarms, and so on) associated with external enclosures.
Flexible Backplane Zoning
Flexible backplane zoning is a functionality introduced in Storage Management that allows you to connect two PERC hardware
controllers to the backplane or internal drive-array by using a single expander. This configuration enables Storage Management
to split the backplane between the two PERC hardware controllers, as a result of that increasing the performance of the
system. When flexible backplane zoning is enabled, the backplanes display the same backplane ID for all backplanes connected
to the two PERC hardware controllers. In flexible backplane zoning, physical disks and virtual disks connected to the first
controller is not displayed on the second controller and the other way around. For example, If you have to create a virtual disk
using the first controller, only the physical disks connected to the first controller is enumerated and available for the operation.
The same is applicable when you view the Slot Occupancy Report for a particular controller.
The Flexible backplane zoning feature is only supported on backplanes of 24 slotsPowerEdge R630 and R730xd. If the
backplane consists of 26 slots, in the case of PowerEdge R730xd, the additional two slots located next to the rear ports are not
considered in this configuration.
NOTE: Flexible backplane zoning can be configured only through RACADM and not through Storage Management.
NOTE: Flexible backplane zoning is supported only on PERC (internal) family of controllersPERC H730 Adapter, PERC
H730 Mini, HBA 330, and HBA 330 Mini. This feature is not supported on PERC H330 Adapter and PERC H330 Mini.
NOTE: Minimum of six seconds gap is required for any hot-plugable devices in or out operations.
Enclosures
Storage Management enables management of various enclosures and their components. In addition to managing the physical
disks contained in the enclosure, you can monitor the status of the fans, power supply, and temperature probes in an enclosure.
You can view these components by expanding the controller, connector, and enclosure objects in the Storage Management tree
view.
Storage management allows hot plugging of enclosures. Hot plugging is defined as the adding of a component to a system while
the operating system is still running.
NOTE:
This feature requires that the physical devices connected to the controller have the latest firmware. For the latest
supported firmware, contact your service provider.
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