Is there any requirement for Supermicro’s direct attached U.2 backplane when pairing it with a tri-mode Storage Add-on-Card with RAID support from Supermicro for either NVMe or SAS/SATA connections?
Switching storage device types on the fly is not allowed. This means you cannot switch between NVMe and SAS/SATA connection cables without power cycling the card.
Each tri-mode controller card must operate in a single NVMe or SAS/SATA mode. Therefore, all cable connections on an individual controller card must be exclusively NVMe or exclusively SAS/SATA.
For NVMe applications
To ensure seamless operation with SMC SAS 3808/3808N/3816 iMR and 4116 MR series for NVMe drive connections, the NVMe backplane I2C Slave Address for the BMC sideband protocol must be set to “0x66h” and the backplane CPLD registers must comply with Gen 2 definitions. Please consult with our Technical Support personnel if you are unsure about the I2C bus slave configuration on the installed backplane models.
When using the AOC for NVMe device storage, avoid connecting NVMe cables from both the motherboard BMC and multiple NVMe controller cards to the same backplane. Each backplane should have its individual I2C bus sideband interface connected to a single master, either the motherboard BMC or the tri-mode controller card.
For SAS/SATA applications
To ensure seamless operation with SMC tri-mode SAS 3808/3808N/3816 iMR and 4116 MR series for SAS/SATA devices, the system backplanes must support SGPIO sideband interface and include a pull-down resistor installed on the BP_TYPE signal in accordance with SFF-9402 and SFF-8448 specifications. Please consult our Technical Support personnel to verify which backplane models comply with these requirements. Alternatively, consider selecting SAS/SATA-only controller models for this application.
*Note: SMC SAS 3808/3808N/3816 iMR and 4116 MR series AOC working w/ backplane include the follows.
Print
Share