SAS Connectivity Card (CIOv) for IBM BladeCenter
6
Table 5. Components used when connecting the HS22 onboard RAID controller to the integrated
BladeCenter S storage
Diagram
reference
Part number / Machine
type
Description
Quantity
Varies
BladeCenter HS22 or other supported server
1 to 6
43W4068
SAS Connectivity Card (CIOv) for IBM BladeCenter
1 per
server
8886
BladeCenter S
1
39Y9195
IBM BladeCenter SAS Connectivity Module
1 or 2
43W3581
IBM BladeCenter S 6-Disk Storage Module (DSM)
1 or 2
Not applicable
Onboard RAID controller
integrated
Take these considerations into account when planning BladeCenter S basic local storage
implementations:
Every blade requiring integrated storage connectivity must have one SAS Connectivity Card (CIOv)
z
installed.
At least one BladeCenter S Disk Storage Module (DSM) must be installed into the BladeCenter S
z
chassis; a maximum of two DSMs are supported in one chassis. The IBM BladeCenter S does not
ship with any DSMs as standard.
At least one SAS Connectivity Module must be installed into the BladeCenter S chassis. A maximum
z
of two SAS modules are supported for redundancy and high availability purposes.
Each physical hard disk drive in any DSM can be assigned to the one blade server only, and the
z
blade itself sees this physical disk (or disks) as its own hard disk drives connected via SAS
Connectivity Card. That is, there are no LUNs, storage partitions, and so forth as in shared storage
systems. Instead, each blade has its own set of physical disks residing in DSM (or DSMs).
The SAS Connectivity Module controls disk assignments by using zoning-like techniques, which
z
results in the SAS module maintaining single, isolated dedicated paths between physical HDDs and
the blade server. Configuration of HDD assignments is done by the administrator, and the
administrator uses predefined templates or creates custom configurations.
The RAID functionality is supplied by the onboard disk controller in the blade servers. RAID levels
z
supported by onboard RAID controller on blade itself are:
RAID-0 (Integrated Striping - IS)
z
RAID-1 (Integrated Mirroring - IM)
z
RAID-1E (Integrated Mirroring Enhanced - IME)
z
The maximum number of drives supported by the IM volume is two plus one optional global hot spare.
z
The IME volume supports up to ten HDDs plus two optional hot spares. The IS volume supports up to
ten HDDs. The IS volume does not support hot spare drives.
When creating a RAID-1 array, we recommend you span both disk storage modules. This maximizes
z
availability of data in the event that one of the paths to the disks is lost, because there is only one
connection to each disk storage modules in case two SAS Connectivity Modules are used.
Mixing HDDs of different capacities in a single volume is supported. However, the total volume size is
z
aligned with the size of the smallest HDD, and excess space on larger-sized HDDs is not used.
Supported combinations of volumes include:
z
Two IM or IME volume per blade server
z
