IBM #EL3W Composite Storage Backplane with PCIe3 x8 Cache SAS RAID Internal Adapter 6 Gb for 5148

IBM feature #EL3W is a composite storage feature for the IBM Elastic Storage Server, machine type 5148. It combines a high performance storage backplane, CCIN 2B5A, with a PCIe3 x8 cache SAS RAID internal adapter 6 Gb, CCIN 57DC, and one mini-SAS HD cable that attaches to the backplane. The backplane provides slots for 8 of 2.5 inch small form-factor hard disk drives or solid-state drives and 6 of 1.8 inch SSDs, and it also supports a slim DVD media bay.

The adapter is an internal PCI Express generation-3 SAS RAID adapter that contains the SAS RAID controller and SAS Expander ports. It is pre-installed in the dedicated internal PCIe3 x8 slot P1-C14. It has a data read-write speed of 6 Gbps and a real write cache of 2 GB. With 4:1 cache compression the cache increases to 8 GB. The write cache contents are protected against power loss with flash memory and super capacitors, which removes the need for a cache battery.

The adapter supports both SFF drives and SSDs in a Dual Storage IOA RAID configuration, with RAID 0, 5, 6, 10, 5T2, 6T2 and 10T2. It provides two external SAS ports. The adapter CCIN is 57DC and the adapter FRU number is 00WV511. Cable 00RR483 connects the lower storage backplane connector J1 to the P1 connector on the adapter. The I/O bus is PCIe3 x8 in an internal slot with a x16 connector and x8 bus signalling, the voltage is 12 V, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 7 or later is supported.