Dell PowerEdge C8000 - Manual (Page 14)

14 About Your System
SAS Connectors Features
The storage sled has two SASx28 expander chips on the SAS expander. Each
expander chip, labeled LSI 28 port 6 GB expander A/B port in Figure 1-8, has
its own unique SAS address and connects to two internal mini-SAS
connectors and two external mini-SAS connectors. The external mini-SAS
connectors support direct cable connection, an external mini-SAS x4 cable
(SFF-8088) connects the compute sled’s HBA/RAID card to the SAS
expander. The external mini-SAS A1, A2, B1, and B2 connectors connect to
all 12 or 24 hard-drives. The internal mini-SAS connectors support hard-drive
backplane connection, the hard-drives and SAS expander in the storage sled
communicates via the hard-drive backplane.
The storage sled includes an Expander Flash Utility (Xflash). This utility is a
Windows or Linux-based command line utility that you can use to identify
the SAS address of the SAS expander, determine the expander firmware
version, reset the SAS expander, or upgrade the firmware on the SAS
expander chips. See "Using the Expander Flash Utility" on page 59 for more
information about the expander flash utility.
NOTE: When you configure zoning for the storage sled, the external mini-SAS
connectors are separated into zone groups 0, 1, 2, and 3. Zoning allows each
compute sled to have access to the hard-drives in an assigned zone.