LSI 25083 manual 12Overview

Table 1.1	SAS RAID Controller Array Limitations
		9240-4i	9240-8i	9260-4i	9260-8i	9261-8i	9280 4i/4e	9280-8e
Specification		SAS	SAS	SAS	SAS	SAS	SAS	SAS
Maximum drives per		16*	16*	32	32	32	240	240
controller
Maximum hot spares		8	8	32	32	32	240	240
per controller
Maximum spans per		8	8	8	8	8	8	8
virtual drive
Maximum enclosures		2	2	2	2	2	10	10
per port**
Number of ports		1	2	1	2	2	2	2

*- Can support up to 64 devices, but only 16 can be used in a RAID configuration.

**- Assumes one Storage Enclosure Processor (SEP) per enclosure.

The maximum numbers in Table 1.1 depend on how many physical devices you have connected to the RAID controller. For example, the maximum number of drive groups is equal to the number of drives supported by the controller. Thus, for the SAS 9240-4i RAID controller, the maximum number of drive groups per controller is eight, which is based on the maximum number of physical devices that can be connected. In addition, the maximum number of hot spares per controller is equal to the maximum number of drives per controller.

Although you can have up to 16 virtual drives per drive group and up to 16 drive groups per controller (depending on the controller), there is a limit of 64 virtual drives per controller.

These RAID controllers support 64-bit logical block addressing (LBA), which makes it possible to connect a large number of drives to the RAID controller, directly and through expanders. However, the actual number of drives that you can attach depends on the limits listed in Table 1.1 rather than by actual RAID volume capacity.

1-12Overview

Copyright © 2009 by LSI Corporation. All rights reserved.