5908-8204 - IBM i Model E8A PCI-X DDR 1.5GB Cache SAS RAID Adapt
IBM i Power 6, 8204 (#5908) - PCI-X DDR 1.5GB Cache SAS RAID Adapter (BSC)
PCI-X DDR 1.5GB Cache SAS RAID Adapter provides disk controller drive or SSD controller function using PCI-X DDR technology, a maximum of 1.5GB compressed write cache and a maximum 1.6GB compressed read cache. Auxiliary write cache and concurrent battery maintenance are provided. The controller is implemented using two physical cards that are firmly connected and requires two adjacent PCI slots. It provides three mini-SAS 4x connectors for the attachment of SAS drives located in a #5886 EXP12S/#5887 EXP24S Expansion Drawers. The controller supports a maximum of five SAS #5886 EXP 12S Expansion Drawers. The controller supports a maximum of two #5887 EXP24S drawers, but can also support a #5886 I/O drawer in addition to the two #5887 providing a total of 60 SAS bays. It supports up to 6 drive slots in one POWER6 560/570/770 CEC drawers and up to three POWER6 560/570/770 drawers in the same server. With proper cabling and configuration, multiple wide ports are used to provide redundant paths to each dual port SAS disk or SSD. The adapter manages SAS path redundancy and path switching should a SAS drive failure occur. CCIN is 572F/575C.
The adapter provides RAID 0, RAID 5, RAID 6 and RAID 10 for AIX linux. Under IBM i OS, mirroring and data spreading is provided by the operating system and RAID 5 and RAID6 is provided by the adapter. #5904, #5906 and #5908 are all feature codes representing the same physical cards, but different feature codes are used to indicate if a blind swap cassette is used and its type. #5908 indicates a Gen-3 blind swap cassette used in enclosures such as the 19-inch #5790, 5796 or Power 570 CEC, Power 770 CEC or Power 780 CEC.
With the optional pairing of adapters, an even higher level of protection beyond, auxiliary cache is provided via a dual controller I/O configuration to protect against the failure of an entire adapter. In such a high availability I/O configuration, SAS X cables are used to attach #5886 EXP 12S/#5887 EXP24S Expansion Drawers and the 4th mini-SAS connector (top) is used with an adapter to adapter (AA) SAS CABLE, (3M #3681, 6M #3682), to directly connect the card sets. Paired adapters must reside on the same server/partition for IBM i, but can be in the same or separate servers/partitions for AIX/Linux.
Highlights
SAS speed = 3Gb/s
SAS-SSP, SMP are supported
Supports Single controller with SAS y cables( #3692, #3693, #3694) for #5886 EXP 12S/#5887 EXP24S or with SAS AI cables for Power 560/570 CEC
Supports Dual controller with SAS x cables IBM i Power 6, 8204 (#3661, #3662, #3663) and SAS (AA) cableIBM i Power 6, 8204 (#3681 or #3682).
Built-in auxiliary cache mirrors write cache for redundancy
Attributes provided: PCI-X DDR 1.5GB Cache SAS RAID Adapter
Attributes required: two adjacent PCI-X slots, #5922 if single controller, if paired controller use either #3681 or #3682 (AA) cables.
For 8204-E8A: IBM i Power 6, 8204 (#5908)
Minimum required: 0
Maximum allowed: 24 (Initial order maximum: 24)
OS level required:
Single controller support
IBM i 5.4.5 or later
AIX 5.3 with the 5300-07 Technology Level and Service Pack 9, or later
AIX 5.3 with the 5300-08 Technology Level and Service Pack 7, or later
AIX 5.3 with the 5300-09 Technology Level and Service Pack 4, or later
AIX 5.3 with the 5300-10 Technology Level, or later
AIX 6.1 with the 6100-00 Technology Level and Service Pack 9, or later
AIX 6.1 with the 6100-01 Technology Level and Service Pack 5, or later
AIX 6.1 with the 6100-02 Technology Level and Service Pack 4, or later
AIX 6.1 with the 6100-03 Technology Level, or later
SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 10 SP2 for POWER Systems, or later
SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 11 for POWER Systems, or later
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for POWER, Version 4.7 or later
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for POWER, Version 5.2 or later
OS level required for Dual controller support
AIX 5.3 with the 5300-11 Technology Level, or later
AIX 5.3 with the 5300-10 Technology Level and Service Pack 2, or later
AIX 5.3 with the 5300-09 Technology Level and Service Pack 5, or later
AIX 5.3 with the 5300-08 Technology Level and Service Pack 8, or later
AIX 6.1 with the 6100-04 Technology Level, or later
AIX 6.1 with the 6100-03 Technology Level and Service Pack 3, or later
AIX 6.1 with the 6100-02 Technology Level and Service Pack 6, or later
AIX 6.1 with the 6100-01 Technology Level and Service Pack 7, or later
AIX levels requiring service packs will be available on or before January 31, 2010.
IBM i 6.1 with 6.1.1 machine code or later
SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 10 SP2 for POWER Systems, or later
SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 11 for POWER Systems, or later
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for POWER, Version 4.7 or later
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for POWER, Version 5.2 or later
Initial Order/MES/Both/Supported: Both
CSU: Yes
Return parts MES: No
Note:
AIX supports Max of 16
Linux supports Max of 16
IBM i supports Max of 24
VIOS attachment requires VIOS 2.1.1.0 or later