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Server Administrator Storage Management 8.3 User’s Guide

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Backplanes

You can view the Backplane object by expanding the controller and connector object 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 configuration 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 flexible backplane zoning is enabled, the backplanes display the same backplane ID for all backplanes connected to the two PERC hardware controllers. In flexible backplane zoning, physical disks and virtual disks connected to the first 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 first controller, only the physical disks connected to the first 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 configuration.

If a PCIe SSD Extender card is connected to the backplane, then the PCIe SSD slots are excluded from the zone, because NVMe drives are not supported in flexible backplane zoning. The configurations supported are: 12+12, 16+8, 8+16, 20+4, and 4+20. For example, In the 16+8 configuration, 16 slots are assigned or connected to the first controller and the remaining 8 slots are automatically connected to the second controller.

NOTE: Flexible backplane zoning can be configured only through RACADM and not through Storage Management.

NOTE: Flexible backplane zoning is supported only on PERC (internal) family of controllers—PERC H730 Adapter and PERC H730 Mini. This feature is not supported on PERC H330 Adapter and PERC H330 Mini.

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