In-Win Hybrid Chassis: OCUlink Vs SAS/SATA

[oguruma]

I'm interested in building a box with the In-Win IW-RS316. It supports a total of 16 hot-swappable drives, with up to 8 of them being NVMe.

Looking at the backplane, it looks like it has 2 mini-SAS connectors to support the 8 bays in the middle.

The 8 "hybrid" bays on the outside each use an 8611 OCUlink connector. That makes sense for using NVMe drives, but how do you support SATA drives with that?

The closest cable I could find that would do that would be an OCUlink to 8643, but that would require a total of 8 - 8643 connectors on your motherboard/HBA card(s) to use all of the those bays.

Is there such thing as a 8611 to 8643/8087 reverse fanout cable that splits one 8643 into 4 - 8611 connectors to support SATA/SAS drives?

SOLVED:

Reached out to In-Win (and read the manual). The SAS expander on the backplane gives access to 16 SAS/SATA drives as long as an OCUlink/slimSAS cable isn't connected to that drive. Connecting an OCUlink/slimSAS to one of the NVMe-compatible bays means that it can only be used with NVMe (until the OCUlink/slimSAS cable is disconnected from that bay).

From In-Win (who got back to me < 6 hours after I reached out via their website).

Thank you for reaching out to us regarding our RS316-07 model. This model has an integrated SAS Expander chip on the backplane. It is not a direct connect backplane where each Mini-SAS cable controlling up to 4x drives. The SAS Expander chip provides control and access to all 16 drives. All that is needed is a Host Bus Adapter or Host RAID Adapter to connect to the backplane via the first two SFF-8643 connectors. When the Host Adapter is connected to the backplane, are you able to view the SATA drives within the Host Adapter’s GUI?



In regards to the OcuLink connectors, if an OcuLink cable is attached to the backplane, each cable connected OcuLink port will reside outside of the control of the SAS Expander as the NVMe controller will provide a direct connection to the OcuLink port causing the SAS Expander to disregard each occupied NVMe drive. However, the SAS Expander will still be able to control all other non-OcuLink connected drive bays. For example, if SATA drives are installed instead of U.2 NVMe drives.



Unfortunately, after reviewing our documentation under the “Download” tab on our product link: https://www.ipc.in-win.com/rackmount-chassis-iw-rs316-07 I noticed that our descriptions are not very clear and may cause confusion.



Will you be able to connect an HBA or RAID HBA to one or both 12G (SFF-8643) ports to see if the HBA is able to view all the installed SATA drives? A screenshot of the HBA GUI will be helpful. In addition, the SAS Expander backplane shipped to you also has an integrated DIP Switch which is used for different Host Bus Controllers. It should already be defaulted for use with LSI/Broadcom controllers. Once you have things connected, we can try to work with you to get things running.

 

[sretalla]

how do you support SATA drives with that?

Something like this?

Asrock Rack 60 cm OCULINK TO 4*SATA CABLE - Newegg.com

Buy Asrock Rack 60 cm OCULINK TO 4*SATA CABLE with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

 

[oguruma]

Something like this?

Asrock Rack 60 cm OCULINK TO 4*SATA CABLE - Newegg.com

Buy Asrock Rack 60 cm OCULINK TO 4*SATA CABLE with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

I'm not sure how that would work....

There's one OCUlink connector per hard drive on the backplane, so do I just use P1 on the fanout cable connected to the motherboard/hba?

 

[Arwen]

No, that cable is likely the other direction. Converting a motherboard OCUlink 4 lane to 4 x SATA ports. Some ASRock Rack moherboards use those OCUlink connectors, 4x or 8x, for either SATA or PCIe.

It is possible you are missing the controller card. Or the motherboard that supports those 8 NVMe drives.

For example, their are new LSI, (Broadcom ...), storage controller cards that support SATA, SAS and NVMe drives. Their are expensive, (probably not even available on the used market yet), and generally require special back planes or expanders to support NVMe drives. Those cards might support either 4 lane PCIe NVMe, dual port SAS, or single port SATA in a NVMe drive slot.

So, what is the chassis manufacturer and model?

 

[oguruma]

No, that cable is likely the other direction. Converting a motherboard OCUlink 4 lane to 4 x SATA ports. Some ASRock Rack moherboards use those OCUlink connectors, 4x or 8x, for either SATA or PCIe.

It is possible you are missing the controller card. Or the motherboard that supports those 8 NVMe drives.

For example, their are new LSI, (Broadcom ...), storage controller cards that support SATA, SAS and NVMe drives. Their are expensive, (probably not even available on the used market yet), and generally require special back planes or expanders to support NVMe drives. Those cards might support either 4 lane PCIe NVMe, dual port SAS, or single port SATA in a NVMe drive slot.

So, what is the chassis manufacturer and model?

In-Win IW-RS316-07

The motherboard is billed as being "hybrid" in that it can support 16 drives, with up to 8 of them being NVMe. As I understand it, all 16 can be used for SAS/SATA. They even sell a different-colored drive sled for NVMe drives to denote which ones are NVMe vs SAS/SATA. It wouldn't make sense to offer this as an add-on if the 8 "hybrid" bays were actually only capable of supporting NVMe.

There's a slimSAS version of the backplane, which I know much less about, however it has the same configuration, except the OCUlink 8611 are swapped for slimSAS.

 

[Arwen]

This bit below has the details:

InWin’s exclusive backplane comes with great connectivity and is designed to support SAS/SATA and NVMe for Slimline or OCuLink host interface. The onboard 12G SAS expander mainly manages the communication of SAS/SATA HDD interface, it integrates end-to-end connectivity and reduces cable clutter.

It indicates that that if you just want SATA/SAS, you use a 6/12Gbps SAS controller. Then make sure you order this version:

Mini-SAS HD & Slimline backplane

Just confirm with manufacturer.

 

[oguruma]

This bit below has the details:

It indicates that that if you just want SATA/SAS, you use a 6/12Gbps SAS controller. Then make sure you order this version:

Just confirm with manufacturer.

Reached out to In-Win. Between that an RTFM, the integrated Broadcom SAS expander on the backplane gives access to all 16 SAS/SATA drives (assuming that's what's connected), so the 2 8643 connectors + an HBA is all that's needed to use 16 SAS/SATA drives. If you want to use NVMe in the 8 compatible bays, then you need a motherboard/pcie card that supports OCUlink/slimSAS.