5U Expansion enclosures

The 5U SAS Expansion enclosure supports up to 92 drives in 3.5” large form factor (LFF) carriers in a 5U footprint, allowing greater rack density than 2U enclosures. The enclosure is mounted on slide rails and moves forward from the rack into a “service position” to remove or replace drives.

•  1  Display panel indicators
•  2  Rack retention thumb screws
•  3  Power® supply unit indicators
•  4  Power supply units (PSUs)
•  5  PSU fascia (1U)
•  6  Front fascia (4U)

The front of the enclosure provides access to the dual-redundant power supplies, and an indicator panel providing high-level status. The power supplies are housed in the bottom portion of the enclosure, behind a removeable bezel.

However, as Figure 2 shows, the 4U and 1U fascias are packaged separately. You must attach them to the front of the 5U expansion enclosure as part of the initial installation process.

•  1  Power cable connector for PSU 2
•  2  Power cable retention clamps
•  3  Fan module
•  4  Fan release latch
•  5  Fan fault indicator
•  6  Expansion canister
•  7  SAS ports and indicators
•  8  Expansion canister indicators
•  9  Power cable connector for PSU 1

The rear of the enclosure provides access to two primary expansion canisters, four redundant fan modules, and the power connectors. The 5U expansion canisters are mounted upside down into the enclosure compared to their orientation in a 2U expansion enclosure. Thus, Port 1 is to the right of Port 2.

Each primary expansion canister has two Wide-SAS ports: Port 1 (on the right) is for upstream connection (toward the controller), and Port 2 (on the left) is for downstream connection (to more expansion enclosures).

Both expansion canisters can access all the drives in the expansion enclosure, and so provide a redundant path to data.

The 92 drives are accessed by sliding the drawer forward to the Service position and removing the top lid. All the drives are then available for servicing while the drawer continues to operate.

The centre of the drawer includes two “Secondary Expansion Modules”, which provide the additional fanout that is required to connect all 92 SAS endpoints to the primary expansion canisters.

The Power Supply Units (PSUs) in the 2U Expansion Enclosure are combined power and cooling units, housing the main cooling fans for the enclosure. Therefore, power supplies should only be removed from the enclosure during a Power supply replacement operation.

A high-density expansion enclosure has sets of LEDs on the front and rear of the enclosure. Inside the expansion enclosure, LEDs also indicate the status of the drives and each secondary expander module. For more information, see 5U Expansion enclosure indicators.