Users Guide
9
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.
Related links
Enclosures
Backplanes
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 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 conguration 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
exible backplane zoning is enabled, the backplanes display the same backplane ID for all backplanes connected to the two PERC
hardware controllers. In exible backplane zoning, physical disks and virtual disks connected to the rst 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 rst controller, only the
physical disks connected to the rst 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 slots—PowerEdge 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 conguration.
If a PCIe SSD Extender card is connected to the backplane, then the PCIe SSD slots are excluded from the zone, because NVMe
drives are not supported in exible backplane zoning. The congurations supported are: 12+12, 16+8, 8+16, 20+4, and 4+20. For
example, In the 16+8 conguration, 16 slots are assigned or connected to the rst controller and the remaining 8 slots are
automatically connected to the second controller.
NOTE: Flexible backplane zoning can be congured only through RACADM and not through Storage Management.
NOTE: Flexible backplane zoning is supported only on PERC (internal) family of controllers—PERC H730 Adapter, PERC
H730 Mini, HBA 330, and HBA 330 Mini. This feature is not supported on PERC H330 Adapter and PERC H330 Mini.
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.
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