Enclosures

Enclosures are rack-mounted hardware that contains several components of the system: canisters, drives, and power supplies. Enclosures can be used to extend the capacity of the system. They are only supported on SAN Volume Controller 2145-DH8 or SAN Volume Controller 2145-SV1 nodes. For other models of the system, you must use external storage systems to provide capacity for data. The term enclosure is also used to describe the hardware and other parts that are plugged into the enclosure.

If you have SAN Volume Controller 2145-DH8 or SAN Volume Controller 2145-SV1 controller nodes, you can add expansion enclosures to expand the available capacity of the system. (Other controller models do not support expansion enclosures.) Each system can have a maximum of four I/O groups, with two chains of expansion enclosures attached to each I/O group. On each SAS chain, the systems can support up to a SAS chain weight of 10. Each 2145-92F expansion enclosure adds a value of 2.5 to the SAS chain weight. Each 2145-12F or 2145-24F expansion enclosure adds a value of 1 to the SAS chain weight. For example, each of the following expansion enclosure configurations has a total SAS weight of 10:
  • Four 2145-92F enclosures per SAS chain
  • Ten 2145-12F enclosures per SAS chain
  • Two 2145-92F enclosures and five 2145-24F enclosures per SAS chain
For information about connecting the nodes in the I/O group to expansion enclosures, see Connecting the optional 2U SAS expansion enclosures to the 2145-DH8.

An expansion enclosure houses the following additional hardware: power supply units (PSUs), canisters, and drives. Enclosure objects report the connectivity of the enclosure. Each expansion enclosure is assigned a unique ID. It is possible to change the enclosure ID later.