Technical Product Specification

Storage and Peripheral Drive Bays Intel® Server System P4000IP and Intel® Workstation System P4000CR Family TPS
Revision 1.2 Intel order number G38159-002
93
Each connector on the SAS expander card can be used as a “cable in” (SAS Controller to SAS
Expander) or “cable out” (SAS Expander to Hot Swap Backplane) type connector. However, for
contiguous drive mapping (0 – 16 or 0 – 24), cable routing differs when using a x8 wide-port
capable 6 Gb SAS/SAS RAID Controller vs. using the embedded SCU ports.
4.3.1.1 Cable Routing using a x8 wide-port capable 6 Gb SAS/SAS RAID Controller
To ensure contiguous drive mapping when using x8 wide-port capable 6 Gb SAS/SAS RAID
Controller with a SAS expander card, the system must be cabled as follows:
 Cables from the SAS Expander to the hot swap backplane must be connected in order:
A – D for 16-drive configurations, and A – F for 24 drive configurations.
 The cables from the SAS controller can be attached to any of the remaining connectors
on the SAS expander card.
4.3.1.2 Cable Routing using the embedded SCU ports
Note: The following may also be applied when using any 3 Gb SAS/SAS RAID Controller.
For storage configurations that utilize up to 16 or 24 hard disk drives for storage only and an
internally mounted SSD as a boot device, the system must be configured as follows to
ensure contiguous drive mapping (0 – 16 or 0-24):
 At least one internally mounted SSD device must be attached to the AHCI controller
(SATA_0 or SATA_1 on the server board) and used as a boot device.
 Cables from the SAS Expander to the hot swap backplane must be connected in order:
B – E for 16-drive configurations, and B – G for 24 drive configurations.
 The SCU_0 or 3G SAS/SAS RAID (0-3) connector is cabled to the first mini-SAS
connector on the hot swap backplane
 The SCU_1 or 3G SAS/SAS RAID (4-7) connector is cable to Connector A on the SAS
expander card.
For storage configurations that require utilizing a hard disk drive as the boot device, the
system must be cabled as follows to ensure a boot device is found and for contiguous drive
mapping (0-16 or 0-24).
 The SCU_0 (0-3) connector on the server board is cabled to the first mini-SAS
connector on the hot swap backplane
 The SCU_1 (4-7) connector on the server board is cable to Connector_A on either the
24-port or 36-port SAS expander card.
 Cables from the SAS Expander to the hot swap backplane must be connected in
order: B – F on the 24-port expander card, and B – G on the 36-port expander card.
Note: Current SCU controller design limitations prevent any hard drive attached to a SAS
expander card from being a boot device when both SCU connectors are attached to the SAS
expander card.
Please reference the Intel
®
Server System P4000IP Product Family Service Guide for cable
routing diagrams illustrating a variety of storage configurations.