Deployment Guide

Cabling the storage enclosure

There are a number of methods to cable the Dell Storage MD1280 series storage enclosure to host

servers and to additional Dell Storage MD1280 series storage enclosures. The particular configuration

selected depends on storage capacity, level of resiliency of both the server and storage enclosure, and

the OS being used.

NOTE: The maximum supported SAS cable length is 4 m.

NOTE: Only two systems can be daisy chained behind one HBA or RAID card.

NOTE: All connections from host server to storage enclosure and from storage enclosure to storage

enclosure are made by using SAS cables with SFF-8088 mini-SAS connectors.

Windows

There are three types of configurations supported for Windows host servers:

• Single Path configuration: This uses a simplified cabling scheme, but does not provide redundancy or

fault-tolerance. Use this when the OS or a higher-level application is being used for data resiliency.

• Symmetric Multipath configuration: This uses a cascading configuration that provides path

redundancy, but does not provide against enclosure loss.

• Asymmetric Multipath configuration: This uses a high availability configuration that allows the host

server to reach any enclosure if a path or single enclosure is lost.

For multipath configurations, Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) must be configured. Dell recommends the

usage of Fail Over Only policy.

Single Server configurations

This section provides information related to the single server configurations:

• Single server dual I/O card symmetric configuration

• Single server dual I/O card asymmetric configuration

• Single server single I/O card symmetric configuration

• Single server single I/O card asymmetric configuration