IBM #EJ1M Expanded Function Storage Backplane 12 SFF-3 Bays with RDX Bay for 9009 and 9223

Feature #EJ1M adds to 9009 and 9223 servers an expanded function storage backplane, CCIN 6B64, that has slots for twelve 2.5-inch SFF-3 HDDs or SSDs plus one RDX drive bay. It is a composite feature: with the backplane come two PCIe3 x8 cache SAS RAID internal adapters 6 Gb, CCIN 57D8, preinstalled in the internal slots P1-C49 and P1-C50, and two mini-SAS HD cables that join the adapters to the backplane. The supported models are the 9009-41A, 9009-41G, 9009-42A, 9009-42G, 9223-42H and 9223-42S.

Each adapter runs at 6 Gbps with a 1.8 GB physical write cache, which reaches 7.2 GB with 4:1 compression. Flash memory and super capacitors protect the cache contents against power loss, and there is no cache battery. The controllers handle RAID 0, 5, 6, 10, 5T2, 6T2 and 10T2 for HDDs and SSDs in a dual storage IOA setup and support active/active arrays of two or more. JBOD disks and a split backplane are not available with this feature. Drives with 5xx and 4 KB sectors both work but cannot be mixed in one array.

Under AIX and Linux the two controllers can be owned by the same or by different partitions and can run Easy Tier, which moves hot data to attached SSDs and cold data to HDDs; IBM i supports neither of those two. Optional feature #EJ0W adds a mini-SAS HD cable with two external SAS ports in rear slot P1-C6, taking one #5887, #ESLS or #ESLL drive enclosure in zone mode 1 over YO cables of up to 3 meters. The adapter carries FRU number 01JC773 and a 12 V supply, and the two supplied mini-SAS HD cables are part number 01ML061. AIX, IBM i and Linux are the operating systems.