User's Manual

Enclosures and Backplanes 145

Enclosures and Backplanes

Physical disks can be contained in an enclosure or attached to the system’s

backplane. An enclosure is attached to the system externally while the

backplane and its physical disks are internal.

Backplanes

You can view the Backplane object by expanding the controller and

Connector object in the Storage Management tree view. Storage

Management displays the status of the backplane and attached physical disks.

Although a backplane is similar to an enclosure in that it is attached to a

controller connector and has physical disks, it does not have the management

features (temperature probes, alarms, and so on) associated with external

enclosures.

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 enclosure’s fans, power supply,

and temperature probes. 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, see support.dell.com.

After you hot plug or hot reconfigure an enclosure, refresh the left tree to

display changes in status and configuration; a system reboot is not required.

NOTE: Storage Management does not allow hot removal of enclosures. You must

reboot the system to effect this change in Storage Management.