3ware HTML Bookshelf



3ware® User Guide > Introducing the 3ware® SAS/SATA RAID Controller > System Requirements

System Requirements
3ware 9690SA and 9650SE model RAID controllers have the following requirements:
Motherboard and Slot Requirements
A workstation-class or server-class motherboard, with an available PCI Express x8 or x16 slot that complies with PCI 1.1 or later. (Some versions of the 9650SE can use PCI Express x1 and x4 slots).
A list of motherboards that have been tested is available at
http://www.3ware.com/products/sys_compatibility.asp
A workstation-class or server-class motherboard, with slots that support the specific 3ware RAID controller model, as shown in Table: Required Slots for 3ware RAID Controller Models.
 
 
3ware 9690SA and 9650SE RAID controllers must be installed in a PCI Express slot that complies with PCI 1.1 or later standards.
Drive Requirements
For 9650SE Model Controllers
Depending on the particular model, the 3ware RAID controller may be connected to two, four, eight, twelve, sixteen, or twenty-four SATA drives using the supplied interface cables.
Drives must meet SATA-1 (1.5 GB/s) or SATA-2 (3.0 Gb/s) standards.
For 9690SA Model Controllers
The 3ware 9690SA RAID controller may be connected to up to 128 SAS and/or SATA drives. If all drives are SAS drives and connections are made to both ports of each SAS drive from the controller (for redundancy and performance), then a maximum of 64 drives may be used. A maximum of 32 drives are allowed per RAID unit and up to 32 active RAID units per controller. Also, there is a limit of 4 enclosures with SAS expanders per controller.
You cannot mix SAS and SATA drives in the same unit.
Drives and drive enclosures must meet SAS (3.0 Gbps) and SATA (1.5 or 3.0 Gbps) standards.
A list of drives that have been tested is available at
http://www.3ware.com/products/sys_compatibility.asp
Drives may be of any capacity or physical form factor.
The length of internal unshielded interface cables may not exceed 1M (39”) and a maximum of 6M (234”) for external shielded cables.
Enclosure Requirements
For 9690SA controllers, enclosure management features in 3ware software are available for supported enclosures with expanders that provide SCSI Enclosure Services 2 (SES-2).
For 9650SE controllers, enclosure support is CCU-based with SAF-TE (SCSI Accessed Fault Tolerant Enclosure).
A list of supported enclosures is available at
http://www.3ware.com/products/sys_compatibility.asp
Cascading of enclosures is limited to 4 enclosures based on the same expander. Enclosures may contain cascaded expanders internally.
Operating System
3ware RAID controllers may be used with:
*
Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, 2008, and Vista, both 32-bit and 64-bit x86
*
*
*
*
*
FreeBSD, 32-bit and 64-bit x86
*
For the latest driver versions for all operating systems, see the current Release Notes at http://www.3ware.com/support/.
Other Requirements
*
*
*
3DM 2 (3ware Disk Manager) displays information in a browser. It requires one of the following browsers:
*
*
*
In addition:
*
*
*

Copyright AMCC 2004-2008
To contact Support, log in at https://www.3ware.com

www.3ware.com
1-858-535-6517
1-800-840-6055