5904-8204 - IBM i Model E8A PCI-X DDR 1.5GB Cache SAS RAID Adapt

IBM i Power 6, 8204 (#5904) PCI-X DDR 1.5GB Cache SAS RAID Adapter

PCI-X DDR 1.5GB Cache SAS RAID Adapter provides disk 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 or supported Power system CEC. The controller supports a maximum of five SAS #5886 EXP12S 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. It supports up to 8 drive slots in the CEC of a supported system. 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 and 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. #5904 indicates no blind swap cassette and is used in enclosures such as a Power 550 CEC or Power 750 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 EXP12S/#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, or with SAS AI cable for Power 520/550 CEC

Supports Dual controller with SAS x cables IBM i Power 6, 8204 (#3661, #3662, #3663) and SAS (AA) cable( #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

For 8204-E8A: IBM i Power 6, 8204 (#5904)

Minimum required: 0

Maximum allowed: 25 (Initial order maximum: 25)

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 levels 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 1

Linux supports Max of 1

IBM i supports Max of 25

VIOS attachment requires VIOS 2.1.1.0 or later.