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Cabling your storage system

You can cable a host directly to a controller or use switches to connect a host to a controller. If your storage system includes one or more drive shelves, you must cable them to your controller shelf. You can add a new drive shelf while power is still applied to other components of the storage system. In addition, you can connect your storage system to a network for out-of-band management.

  • Overview and requirements
    You must be familiar with the cabling requirements and considerations for DE Series controller shelves and supported drive shelves.
  • Host cabling
    You can cable a host directly to a controller or use switches to connect a host to a controller.
  • Drive shelf cabling
    You must connect each controller in the controller shelf to an Input/Output module (IOM) in a drive shelf.
  • Power cabling
    You must connect each component's power supplies to separate power circuits.
  • Power sequencing of a multi-enclosure array
    To ensure proper discovery in a multi-enclosure array, power on the expansion shelves first (DE120S, DE240S, DE600S) before powering on the attached controller. Wait about 2 minutes before powering on the controller enclosure. This allows enough time for the drives in the expansion shelves to power up before the controllers start discovery, which will prevent volumes being failed due to missing elements while expansion shelves are powering up.
  • Hot adding a drive shelf
    You can add a new drive shelf while power is still applied to the other components of the storage system. You can configure, reconfigure, add, or relocate storage system capacity without interrupting user access to data.
  • Ethernet cabling for a management station
    You can connect your storage system to an Ethernet network for out-of-band storage array management. You must use Ethernet cables for all storage array management connections.