Intel RS25SB008 Installation manual

Intel
®
Integrated RAID Controller
RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide
Intel Order Number: G46367-004

ii Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide
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®
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Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide iii
Preface
This is the primary hardware guide for the Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008, which
can be used to manage SAS and SATA disk drives. It contains installation instructions
and specifications.
For details on configuring the storage adapters, and for an overview of the software
drivers, see the Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide on the Resource CD.
Audience
This document assumes that you have some familiarity with RAID controllers/modules
and related support devices. The people who benefit from this book are:
• Engineers who are planning to use an Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008 as a part
of their RAID system.
• Anyone installing an Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008 in their RAID system.
Organization
This document includes the following chapters and appendices:
• Chapter 1 provides a general overview of the Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008.
• Chapter 2 describes the procedures for installing and configuring the
RAID controller.
• Chapter 3 provides the characteristics and technical specifications for the Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008.
• Appendix A explains drive roaming and drive migration.
• Appendix B provides safety instructions to be observed during installation
and assembly.
• Appendix C provides regulatory and certification information.
Related Publication
The Intel
®
RAID Software User’s Guide is included on the Resource CD that shipped with
the RAID controller.

iv Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide


Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide v
Table of Contents
Preface ........................................................................................................................iii
Audience ............................................................................................................................... iii
Organization ......................................................................................................................... iii
Related Publication ............................................................................................................... iii
Chapter 1: Overview ................................................................................................... 1
Benefits of SAS and SATA ....................................................................................................1
Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008 .......................................................................................2
Protocol Support ............................................................................................................2
Operating System Support ............................................................................................2
Usability .........................................................................................................................3
Redundancy and Error Handling ...................................................................................3
SAS/SATA Features ......................................................................................................5
Online Capacity Expansion and RAID Level Migration Rules .......................................5
Beep Codes ...................................................................................................................5
Chapter 2: Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware Installation ................... 7
Requirements ........................................................................................................................7
Installing the RAID Controller ................................................................................................7
Configuring the RAID Controller ............................................................................................9
Replacing a Controller ...........................................................................................................9
Resolving a Config Mismatch ................................................................................................9
Chapter 3: Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008 Characteristics ........................... 11
Major Components ..............................................................................................................14
LSI* SAS2208 ROC .....................................................................................................14
Flash ROM ..................................................................................................................14
Boot Strap ROM (SEEPROM) .....................................................................................14
NVSRAM .....................................................................................................................14
SDRAM (Cache) ..........................................................................................................14
Diagnostic Components ..............................................................................................15
SAS/SATA Connectors ................................................................................................16
Super Cap 2 Connector Pin-out ..................................................................................18
PCI Interface ................................................................................................................19
LED Headers ...............................................................................................................19
Serial UART Header ....................................................................................................20
Technical Specifications ......................................................................................................21
Array Performance Features ...............................................................................................21
Fault Tolerance ............................................................................................................22
Electrical Characteristics .............................................................................................23


vi Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide
Thermal and Atmospheric Characteristics .................................................................. 24
Safety Characteristics ................................................................................................. 24
Operating Certifications ............................................................................................... 24
Supported Device Technology ............................................................................................ 24
Support for Hard Disk Drive Devices .......................................................................... 24
SAS Expander Support ............................................................................................... 25
Support for Non-Hard Disk Drive Devices ................................................................... 25
Enclosure Management Support ................................................................................. 25
RAID Functionality and Features ........................................................................................ 25
Hierarchy ..................................................................................................................... 25
SAS Bus and ID Mapping ........................................................................................... 26
Appendix A: Drive Roaming and Drive Migration Install ......................................27
Drive Roaming ..................................................................................................................... 27
Drive Migration .................................................................................................................... 28
Appendix B: Installation/Assembly Safety Instructions .......................................29
English ................................................................................................................................. 31
Deutsch ............................................................................................................................... 32
Français ............................................................................................................................... 33
Español ............................................................................................................................... 35
Italiano ................................................................................................................................. 36
Appendix C: Regulatory and Certification Information .........................................39
Product Safety and EMC Compliance ................................................................................. 39


Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide vii
List of Figures
Figure 1. Changing the Bracket................................................................................................. 8
Figure 2. Installing the Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008 ...................................................... 8
Figure 3. Card Layout.............................................................................................................. 11
Figure 4. Cache Memory Board .............................................................................................. 11
Figure 5. Hardware Block Diagram ......................................................................................... 13
Figure 6. Super Cap 2 Backup Unit with Bracket.................................................................... 15
Figure 7. Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008 SAS/SATA Connectors ................................... 16
Figure 8. Intel
®
SAS/SATA Connector.................................................................................... 18
Figure 9. LED Header ............................................................................................................. 20
Figure 10. UART Connector.................................................................................................... 20


viii Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide


Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide ix
List of Tables
Table 1. Jumper Description ...................................................................................................12
Table 2. SFF-8088 Connector J1A3 Pin List ...........................................................................17
Table 3. SFF-8088 Connector J1B1 Pin List ...........................................................................17
Table 4. Super Cap 2 Connector Pin-out ................................................................................18
Table 5. LED Headers Pin-out ................................................................................................ 19
Table 6. UART Connector Pin-out ...........................................................................................20
Table 7. Technical Specifications ............................................................................................21
Table 8. Array Performance Features .....................................................................................21
Table 9. Fault Tolerance Features ..........................................................................................22
Table 10. Actual Power Consumption Table ...........................................................................23
Table 11. RAID Physical Drive Status .....................................................................................25
Table 12. RAID Virtual Drive Status ........................................................................................26


xIntel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide

Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide 1
1Overview
The Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008 is a high-performance intelligent PCI Express*
3.0 compliant SAS/SATA RAID controller that offers reliability, high performance, and
fault-tolerant disk subsystem management. This is a RAID solution that meets the external
storage needs of workgroup, department, or enterprise systems to use with cost-effective
SATA or high performance SAS media.
As a third generation PCI Express* storage controller, the Intel
®
RAID Controller
RS25SB008 addresses the growing demand for increased data throughput and scalability
requirements across entry level, midrange, and enterprise server platforms.
The controller controls 8 external 6-Gb/s SAS/SATA ports through two SFF-8088 Mini
SAS x4 connectors and allows the use of expanders to connect up to 48 devices. For more
information about the use of expanders, see the ANSI SAS Standard, version 2.0
specification.
SATA and SAS are serial, point-to-point, device interfaces that use simplified cabling,
smaller connectors, lower pin counts, and lower power requirements than parallel SCSI.
The optional Super Cap 2 module provides cached data protection for the RAID
controller, even during system failures.
Benefits of SAS and SATA
SAS is a serial, enterprise-level device interface that leverages the proven SCSI protocol
set. SAS is a convergence of the advantages of SATA, SCSI, and FC, and is the future
mainstay of the enterprise and high-end workstation storage markets. SAS offers a higher
bandwidth per pin than parallel SCSI and improves signal and data integrity.
The SAS interface uses the proven SCSI command set to ensure reliable data transfers,
while providing the connectivity and flexibility of point-to-point serial data transfers. The
serial transmission of SCSI commands eliminates clock skew challenges. The SAS
interface provides improved performance, simplified cabling, smaller connectors, lower
pin count, and lower power requirements than parallel SCSI.
SAS controllers leverage a common electrical and physical connection interface that is
compatible with Serial ATA technology. The SAS and SATA protocols use a thin, 7-wire
connector instead of the 68-wire SCSI cable or 40-wire ATA cable. The SAS/SATA
connector and cable are easier to manipulate, connect to smaller devices, and do not
inhibit airflow. The point-to-point SATA architecture eliminates difficulties created by the
legacy ATA master-slave architecture, while maintaining compatibility with existing
ATA firmware.

2Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide
Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008
The Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008 is an intelligent, low-profile RAID adapter with
an integrated LSI SAS2208 dual-core RAID-On-Chip chipset, providing both a SAS
controller and RAID engine. With 1GB RAM built onto a memory board which is
connected to the RAID baseboard by default, and eight independent ports supporting
6Gb/s and 3Gb/s SAS data transfers using two SFF-8088 mini multi-lane connectors, this
controller supports up to 48 enterprise-class SAS or SATA devices. The PCI Express*
connector fits into an x8 or x16 PCI Express* slot capable of performance up to 8GT/s
per lane.
The RAID Controller is designed to fit various Intel
®
Server Boards and systems. For the
most up-to-date support list, see the Compatibility section under the link for this Intel
®
RAID Controller at http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/server.
Protocol Support
Each port on the SAS controllers supports SAS devices, SATA II devices, or both using
SSP, SMP, STP, and SATA II as follows:
• Serial SCSI Protocol (SSP) to enable communication with other SAS devices.
• SATA II Protocol to enable communication with other SATA II devices.
• Serial Management Protocol (SMP) to share topology management information
with expanders.
• Serial Tunneling Protocol (STP) support for SATA II through expander interfaces.
Operating System Support
• Windows Server 2008 R2*, Windows 7*, Windows Server 2003*, Windows Vista*,
and Windows XP*
• Red Hat* Enterprise Linux 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0
• SuSE* Linux Enterprise Server 9, 10, and 11
• VMWare* ESX 4.0
• Solaris* 10
• Citrix* XEN
• FreeBSD* (supports only x86 version)
The operating systems supported may not be supported by your server board. See the
Tested operating system list for your server board at http://www.intel.com.
To make sure the RAID controller supports your operating system, see also the Tested
Hardware and Operating System List for the Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008.

Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide 3
Usability
• The card ships with both a standard and a low-profile bracket.
• The card ships with a 1GB memory board which is already installed onto the RAID
controller baseboard as the RAID cache.
• Small, thin cabling with serial point-to-point 6.0 Gbps data transfer rates.
• Support for non-disk devices and mixed capacity drives.
• Support for intelligent XOR RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60.
• Dedicated or global hot spare with auto rebuild if an array drive fails.
• User defined stripe size per drive: 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, or 1024 KB.
• Advanced array configuration and management utilities provide:
— Online Capacity Expansion (OCE) adds space to existing drive or new drive.
See Appendix A: Drive Roaming and Drive Migration Install for limitations on
OCE and RAID migration.
— Online RAID level migration (upgrade of RAID mode may require OCE)
— Drive migration
— Drive roaming
— No reboot necessary after expansion
— Load Balancing
• Upgradeable Flash ROM interface.
• Allows for staggered spin-up, hot-plug, and lower power consumption.
• User specified rebuild rate (percent of system resources to use from 0-100%).
Caution: Exceeding 50% rate may cause operating system errors due to waiting for
controller access.
• Background operating mode can be set for Rebuilds, Consistency Checks,
Initialization (auto restarting Consistency Check on redundant volumes), Migration,
OCE, and Patrol Read.
Redundancy and Error Handling
• In-band SES2.
• Enclosure management support.
• Drive coercion (auto-resizing to match existing disks).
• Auto-detection of failed drives with transparent rebuild. There must be disk activity
(I/O to the drive) for a missing drive to be marked as failed.
• Auto-resume of initialization or rebuild on reboot (the Auto Rebuild feature must be
enabled before virtual disk creation).

4Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide
• Smart initialization automatically checks consistency of virtual disks if there are five
or more disks in a RAID 5 array, which optimizes performance by enabling read-
modify-write mode. RAID 5 arrays of only three or four drives use Peer Read mode.
• Smart Technology predicts failures of drives and electronic components.
• Patrol Read checks drives and maps bad sectors.
• Commands are retried at least four times.
• Firmware provides best effort to recognize an error and recover if possible.
• Failures are logged from controller and drive firmware, and SMART monitor.
• Failures are logged in NVRAM, viewable from OS Event Log, Intel
®
RAID Web
Console 2, CIM, and LEDs.
• Multiple cache options allow configuration-specific performance optimization:
— Write-back: Faster because it does not wait for the disk but data will be lost if
power is lost.
— Write-through: Usually slower but ensures data is on the disk.
— Read Ahead: Predicts next read will be sequential and buffers this data into
the cache.
— Non Read Ahead: Always reads from the drive after determining exact location
of each read.
— Adaptive Read Ahead: Reads ahead and caches data only if doing
sequential reads.
— I/O setting. Determines whether read operations check the cache before reading
from disks.
✧Cache I/O: Checks cache first, only reads disk if data is not in the cache.
✧Direct I/O: Reads data directly from disk. (not cache)
• Redundancy through:
— Configuration stored in non-volatile RAM and on the drives (COD).
— Hot-swap support.
— Super Cap 2 backup for cache memory.

Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide 5
SAS/SATA Features
• Provides eight independent phys, each supporting 6Gb/s and 3Gb/s SAS data
transfers per PHY.
• Scalable interface that supports up to 128 physical devices through expanders.
• Supports SSP to enable communication with other SAS devices.
• Supports SMP to communicate topology management information.
• Supports single PHY or wide ports consisting of 2, 3, or 4 PHYs within a single
quad port.
• Allows addressing of multiple SATA targets through an expander if using SATA 2.0-
compliant hard disk drives.
• Single controller multi-pathing (fail-over).
Online Capacity Expansion and RAID Level Migration Rules
• Migration must occur to the same or larger capacity configuration.
• Migration cannot occur if there is more than one virtual disk in a logical array.
• Migration and OCE cannot be done on Spanned Arrays (RAID 10, 50, and 60).
• Migrations supported are RAID 1 to RAID 0, RAID 5 to RAID 0, RAID 6
to RAID 0.
• With OCE, migrations supported are RAID 0 to RAID 1, RAID 0 to RAID 5, RAID
0 to RAID 6, RAID 1 to RAID 5, RAID 1 to RAID 6, RAID 5 to RAID 6.
Beep Codes
• Short beep (1 second on, 1 second off): Array has degraded but no data has
been lost.
• Long beep (3 seconds on, 1 second off): Array has failed and data has been lost.
• Short beep (1 second on, 3 seconds off): Using hot spare in rebuild; alarm will
continue during rebuild with a different sound at completion.
To disable the alarm, choose Disable Alarm. To enable the alarm, choose Enable Alarm.
To disable the alarm only until the next event or until next power cycle, choose
Silence Alarm.

6Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide

Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide 7
2Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008
Hardware Installation
Requirements
• Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008(SAS/SATA cables need to be
prepared separately)
• A host system with an available x8 or x16 PCI-Express* slot
• Resource CD, which contains drivers and documentation
• SAS or SATA hard drives up to 6Gb/s speed
• Compatible SAS/SATA cables (for cable requirements, see step 4 in “Installing the
RAID Controller”)
Note: Intel Corporation strongly recommends using an uninterruptible power supply (UPS).
Installing the RAID Controller
To install the RAID Controller, follow these steps:
1. Turn off the power to the system, all drives, enclosures, and system components.
Remove the power cord(s).
2. Remove the server cover. For instructions, see your server system documentation.
3. If necessary, change the bracket on the RAID controller to fit the height of the
server system (see Figure 1).

8Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide
Figure 1. Changing the Bracket
4. Install the RAID controller into an available server system x8 or x16 PCI-Express*
slot (see Figure 2). To locate an appropriate slot and for instructions on installing an
add-in card, see your server system documentation.
Figure 2. Installing the Intel
®
RAID Controller RS25SB008
5. Configure and install the SAS/SATA Devices in the target external storage case.
Refer to the documentation of the devices for any pre-installation
configuration requirements.
6. Use SAS cables to connect the RAID controller to the target external storage case.
Low-profile
Bracket
AF004149
PCI Express* Slot (3.3 V)
AF004150

Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide 9
7. Install the server system cover and connect the power cords. See your server system
documentation for instructions.
Configuring the RAID Controller
To configure the RAID Controller, follow these steps:
1. Turn on the system power and check to make sure that the SAS/SATA devices
power up before or at the same time as the system.
2. During the boot, the following BIOS message appears to state the keys that you
need to press to enter the Intel
®
RAID BIOS Console 2, such as:
Press <CTRL><G> to run BIOS Console 2.
This message times out after several seconds. If you miss it, you need to restart
the system.
After you press the keys to enter the Intel
®
RAID BIOS Console 2 software, the
firmware takes several seconds to initialize and then display the Intel
®
RAID
Controller number and firmware version. The numbering of the RAID controller
follows the PCI slot scanning order used by the server board.
3. See the Quick Start User’s Guide and the Software User’s Guide for instructions to
configure the RAID controller and to install the operating system drivers.
Replacing a Controller
To replace the RAID controller, see your server system documentation for instructions to
remove and then install an add-in adapter.
Resolving a Config Mismatch
If the newly installed RAID controller was previously configured, a message displays
during POST, stating that there is a configuration mismatch because the configuration data
in the NVRAM differs from that in the hard drives. Use these steps to resolve
the mismatch:
1. Press <Ctrl> + <G> when prompted during boot up to access the BIOS
Configuration Utility.
2. Select Configure > View/Add Configuration to see the NVRAM and
drive configurations.
3. If the drives contain the correct configuration, use configuration from the disks.
4. Press <Esc> and select YES to update the NVRAM.
5. Exit and reboot.

10 Intel® RAID Controller RS25SB008 Hardware User’s Guide