Overview

The PCI Express® (PCIe) Dual - 4x SAS Adapter is a low-profile short form factor adapter for high-performance and high-density, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) applications. It supports the attachment of SAS disk, tape, and DVD using a pair of mini SAS 4x connectors which allow the eight physical links to be used in various narrow and wide-port configurations. The adapter does not have write cache.

The adapter is a 64-bit, 3.3 V, bootable SAS adapter that provides RAID 0 and RAID 10 capability. Some RAID level support is operating system dependent. The adapter provides RAID 0 and RAID 10 for AIX® and Linux. Under the IBM® i operating system, mirroring and data spreading is provided by the operating system. The adapter does not have write cache.

The adapter can address up to 48 SAS disk drives, although the actual number of drives in a system is subject to the physical placement limitations of the system. Externally attached devices are designed to run at a data rate of 1.5 Gbps for serial ATA (SATA) devices, and 3 Gbps for SAS devices. This card supports RAID and non-RAID DASD, tape, and optical devices. This adapter supports the multi-initiator and high availability configurations in AIX and Linux. IBM i does not support feature 5901 in multi-initiator and high availability configurations.

The 5901 supports SAS SFF disk drives located in a PCIe 12X I/O Drawer or SAS disk drives located in an EXP 12S Disk Drawer or SAS disk drives located in a supported Power system unit (split disk backplane).

Specifications

Item

Description

Adapter FRU number

44V4852 (Designed to comply with RoHS requirement)

I/O bus architecture

PCIe

Slot requirement

One available PCIe x8 slot

If the adapter is used with the feature 3650 or 3651 cable card, the cable card occupies slot P1-C3 in the 9117-MMA system unit. Features 3650 and 3651 are only supported in the model 9117-MMA.

Cables

SAS device attachment requires specific cables that are provided with the subsystem or device features being attached. Special cabling is required for multi-initiator and high availability configurations. See Serial attached SCSI cable planning.

Voltage

3.3V

Form factor

Short, low-profile

Maximum number

Refer to PCI adapter placement for machine types 82xx and 91xx.

Attributes

• Two external mini SAS 4x connectors provide attachment of SAS and Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) device enclosures
• SAS Serial SCSI Protocol (SSP), Serial ATA Tunneling Protocol (STP), and Serial Management Protocol (SMP)
• RAID 0, 5, 6, 10

  The write performance of RAID 5 and RAID 6 may be poor on adapters that do not provide write cache. Consider using an adapter that provides write cache when using RAID 5 or RAID 6.

• Concurrent firmware update
• Removable media device supported (Removable media is not supported in multi-initiator and high availability configurations)
• Removable media device supported
• 440 - 500 Mhz PowerPC® (PPC)
• Support for multi-initiator and high availability configurations

Operating system or partition requirements

• AIX:
  • 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
• Linux:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS version 4, with update 7, or later
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS version 5, with update 2, or later
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, with service pack 2, or later
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, or later
• IBM i:
  • IBM i 6.1 with service pack 1, or later

If you are installing a new feature, ensure that you have the software required to support the new feature and that you determine if there are any existing prerequisites. To do this, use the IBM Prerequisite Web site at http://www-912.ibm.com/e_dir/eServerPrereq.nsf .