Cabling considerations for controller-drive tray
hardware upgrades
Compare your current host cabling to the supported cabling for your new controllers to determine
whether you can reuse SFPs, QSFPs or cables from your old cabling configuration. The HBAs,
HCAs, or Ethernet adapters, as well as switches in the network fabric used to connect your hosts to
your storage array must match the HICs in your controller canisters.
Supported cables for E5500 and E5600 controller-drive trays and the EF550 and
EF560 flash arrays
HIC
Cable
Data Rate and
Protocol
Number of
Connectors
Connector
Type
Length
12 Gb/s SAS
4
MiniSAS-HD
passive copper
1-5m
MiniSAS-HD
active copper
8-15m
MiniSAS-HD
optical
5-100m
Fan-out cable type
#2
passive copper
2m
Fan-out cable type
#3
passive copper
2m
6 Gb/s SAS
4
MiniSAS-HD
passive copper
1-10m
MiniSAS-HD
active copper
5-20m
Fan-out cable type
#1
passive copper
2m
56 Gb/s InfiniBand
1
2
QSFP+
passive copper
1-3m
QSFP+
optical
5-100m
40 Gb/s InfiniBand
2
2
QSFP+
passive copper
1-5m
QSFP+
optical
10-300m
16 Gb/s Fibre
Channel
4
SFP+
OM2 SW optical
2, 3, 5, 10,
25m
SFP+
OM3 SW optical
50-150m
SFP+
OS2 LW optical
50-300m
10 Gb/s iSCSI
4
SFP+
OM2 optical
2, 3, 5, 10,
25m
SFP+
OM3 optical
50-150m
Twin-Ax
passive copper
2-7m
8