Users Guide

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 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

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 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.

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.

After you hot plug or hot reconfigure an enclosure, refresh the left tree to display the change in status and configuration; a system reboot

is not required.

78 Enclosures And Backplanes