I am configuring an NVMe RAID setup and need help identifying the correct interconnect cable(s).
Here is my hardware:
• Server: SYS-222H-TN (motherboard X14DBM-SP, BIOS 1.5b)
• RAID Card: AOC-S3916L-H16IR-32DD (tri-mode, 2× SlimSAS x8 connectors: CN0 and CN1)
• Drives: 4× Samsung PM9A3 (MZ-QL21T9) U.2 NVMe SSDs
• Goal: Build a hardware RAID 5 array on the RAID card, then present it to VMware ESXi 8
Current status: The RAID card is detected in BIOS, the controller profile is set to RAID mode (30_PD32-NVMe32), but the drives are NOT detected in Drive Management. I suspect the cabling/sideband is the issue. My existing third-party SlimSAS-to-MCIO cable is 85-ohm and has no sideband connection.
My questions:
1. To connect the RAID card (CN0/CN1 SlimSAS) to the backplane MCIO ports for NVMe operation, what is the correct Supermicro cable part number?
2. How many cables are required? (The backplane has 2 MCIO ports.)
3. Does this cable include the sideband/I2C connection, or does the sideband need to be connected separately? If separate, where should it connect (RAID card vs. motherboard)?
4. For NVMe mode, does the backplane require any specific configuration (e.g., I2C slave address 0x66h, CPLD Gen 2 settings)?
Answer: AOC-S3916L-H16iR does not support NVME drives.
To support NVME drives, you will need
1 x AOC-S4116L-H16iR
2x CBL-MCIO-1270S4T1 MCIO x8 to SlimSAS x8 cables
1x CBL-CDAT-1062 i2c cable
The limitation is it can support up to 4 nvme drives.
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