SAS cabling considerations

Cabling your system correctly is one of the most important aspects of planning for a dual storage I/O adapter (IOA) configuration. For RAID configurations that have disk expansion drawers, correct cabling is required to provide redundancy between each adapter and the disk expansion drawer.

Follow these guidelines when you cable your system.

• For RAID configurations on a 5887 EXP 24S SFF generation-2-bay drawer, X or Y cables are used depending on the type of adapter and mode setting of the disk expansion drawer. This criteria is to provide redundancy for the SAS ports between each controller and disk expansion drawer and redundancy for the SAS ports for each disk drive.
• For RAID configurations on a ESLS EXP 24S SAS Storage Enclosure, X12 or Y12 cables are used depending on the type of adapter and mode setting of the disk storage drawer. This criteria is to provide redundancy for the SAS ports between each controller and disk expansion drawer and redundancy for the SAS ports for each disk drive.

To see examples of how to cable dual storage IOA configurations, see Serial attached SCSI cable planning.