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 conguration 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

conguration.

NOTE

: Flexible backplane zoning can be congured 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.

86 Enclosures And Backplanes