IBM 5901 PCIe Dual-x4 SAS Adapter

• SAS Adapter

IBM 5901 PCIe Dual-4x SAS Adapter is a low-profile short form factor adapter which supports the attachment of SAS disk, tape, and DVD using a pair of mini SAS 4x connectors. From a high level perspective, it is functionally equivalent to the #5912 PCI-X SAS adapter and provides a high-performance connection to SAS devices. The #5901 supports external SAS tape drives such as the 36/72 GB DAT72, 80/160GB DAT160, and 800/1600GB LTO-4 found in the IBM tape units such as the 7214-1U2, TS2240, TS2340, TS3100, TS3200, and TS3310. Other removable media devices supported include IBM SAS/SATA DVD-ROM/RAM drives. SAS adapter-to-enclosure (AE) cables are used to attach these drives. The #5901 supports SAS SFF disk drives located in a PCIe 12X I/O Drawer or SAS disk drives located in an EXP12S or EXP24S Disk Drawer or drives in a POWER6 system CEC (split DASD backplane). AIX/Linux formatted SAS drives are supported with RAID 0 (with mirroring) and RAID 10. IBM i formatted SAS drives are supported and data spreading and mirroring functions are provided by IBM i. RAID-5 or RAID-6 are not supported on the #5901. #5901 has zero write cache. CCIN for #5901 is 57B3. With proper cabling and configuration, multiple wide ports are used to provide redundant paths to each dual port SAS disk . The adapter manages SAS path redundancy and path switching should a SAS drive failure occur. SAS Y cables attach SAS disk drives in an EXP12S or EXP24S Disk Drawers. SAS #3688 cables attach SFF SAS drives in an PCIe 12X I/O Drawer. With the EXP12S or EXP24S Drawer, a high availability I/O configuration can be created using a pair of #5901 adapters and SAS X cables to protect against the failure of a SAS adapter. In the PCIe 12X I/O Drawer, this function is provided via the internal wiring within the drawer itself.