Backplane cabeling with raid controllers

[idata]

Hey experts!

I was searching through many support pages and documents, but didn´t find was i was looking for. Whe are building our server using SC5650 and S3420GPLX with SRCSASBB8I. Because of wishing maximum perfomance we are using none expander backplanes so we should have more performance than using expander backplanes. Is this idea correct (ok, the used harddisks must be fast enough so realize a performace difference, but is the idea itself correct?

As we read in the manuals, there must be made one more connection with none expander backplanes than with expanded. But how? Between board and backlpane? Or raid controller and backplane? SES or SGPIO? I´m helpless!

Searching greetings from sunny germany

Norbert

[Edward_Z_Intel]

When using a non-expander backplane with SRCSASBB8I, you'll need to connect a 3-pin SES cable from the RAID card to the backplane, to make the LEDs on the drive carrier work properly.

Also, don't forget the HSBP cable from baseboard to backplane.

[idata]

Norbert,

Expander backplanes use the combined throughput from from all connections for all installed HDDs. Therefore if you have two SAS connections to the backplane and 6 HDDs, you split the available throughput from the controller among those HDDs. Direct connect is a one to one connection utilizing the maximum throughtput from the controller port to the connected HDD.

Regarding the cabling, there's a cabling guides availble for pedestal systems:

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/CS-030394.htm http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/CS-030394.htm

Regards,

John