Product guide

IBM NeXtScale nx360 M5 17
The following table lists the adapters that are supported for each drive configuration.
Table 11. Drive type and RAID adapter support
No RAID Hardware RAID
Drive type
Quantity
of drives
supported
On board
SATA
N2215
HBA
ServeRAID
M1215
ServeRAID
M5210
1.8-inch SS SATA SSD 4 Yes Yes Yes Yes
2.5-inch SS SATA HDD 2 Yes Yes Yes Yes
2.5-inch SS SAS HDD 2 No Yes Yes Yes
2.5-inch HS SATA or SAS HDD 2 No Yes Yes Yes
3.5-inch SS SATA HDD 1 Yes No No No
Controller specifications
The ServeRAID M5210 SAS/SATA Controller has the following specifications:
Eight internal 12 Gbps SAS/SATA ports

12 Gbps throughput per port

Based on the LSI SAS3108 12 Gbps ROC controller

Two mini-SAS HD internal connectors (SFF8643)

Supports connections to SAS/SATA drives and SAS Expanders

Supports RAID levels 0, 1, and 10

Supports RAID levels 5 and 50 with optional M5200 Series RAID 5 upgrades

Supports RAID 6 and 60 with the optional M5200 Series RAID 6 Upgrade

Supports 1 GB cache (no battery backup) or 1 GB or 2 GB flash-backed cache

Supports performance upgrades through IBM Features on Demand

The ServeRAID M1215 SAS/SATA Controller has the following specifications:
Eight internal 12 Gbps SAS/SATA ports

Up to 12 Gbps throughput per port

Two internal mini-SAS HD connectors (SFF8643)

Based on the LSI SAS3008 12 Gbps RAID on Chip (ROC) controller

Support for RAID levels 0, 1, and 10 standard; support for RAID 5 and 50 with optional FoD upgrade

Zero Controller Cache, no battery/flash backup

Optional support for self-encrypting drives (SEDs) with MegaRAID SafeStore (with RAID 5 upgrade)

Fixed stripe size of 64 KB

For more information, see the list of IBM Redbooks® Product Guides in the RAID adapters category:
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/portals/systemx?Open&page=pg&cat=raid
Internal drive options
The following table lists hard disk drive options for the internal disk storage of the nx360 M5 server. Here
are the rules for mixing drive types:
The server supports multiple drive types: SATA HDDs (simple swap or hot-swap), SAS HDDs (simple

swap or hot-swap), SAS SSDs, and SATA SSDs. These drive types can be intermixed in a server and
on the same RAID controller, but they cannot be intermixed in the same RAID array. In other words,
all drives in a single RAID array must be either all SAS HDDs or all SATA HDDs or all SATA SSDs or
all SAS SSDs.