System Requirements

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System Requirements
This section describes the requirements for the 3ware 9750 model RAID controllers:
Motherboard and Slot Requirements
The 3ware 9750 RAID controller uses workstation-class or server-class motherboards, with an available PCI Express x8 or x16 slot that complies with PCIe Gen 2.0 (recommended for best performance) or PCIe 1.1.
A list of motherboards that have been tested is available at
http://www.lsi.com/channel/support/marketing_resources, through the Data & Interoperability tab.
Drive Requirements
The 3ware 9750 RAID controller may be connected to up to 62 SAS and/or SATA dual-ported drives, or 127 SAS and/or SATA single-ported drives, when using one or more enclosures. A maximum of 32 drives are allowed per RAID unit and up to 32 active RAID units per controller.
3ware 9750 RAID controller is designed for use with drive capacities up to 2 TB and over.
You cannot mix SAS and SATA drives in the same unit.
A mix of 3 Gbps and 6 Gbps hard drives are allowed.
Drives and drive enclosures must meet SAS or SATA (3.0 Gbps and 6.0 Gbps) standards.
A list of drives that have been tested is available at
http://www.lsi.com/channel/support/marketing_resources, through the Data & Interoperability tab.
Drives may be of any capacity or physical form factor.
The length of internal unshielded interface cables may not exceed 1 meter (39 inches).
The length of external cables for SAS 1.1 at 3 Gpbs supports lengths of up to 8 meters and for SAS 2.0 at 6 Gpbs supports external cable length to 10 meters.
Enclosure Management Requirements
For 9750 RAID controllers and release 10.2, enclosure management features in 3ware software are available for supported chassis that provide SCSI Enclosure Services 2 (SES-2) through an internal sideband connection, or via an expander.
When chassis enclosures are cascaded, expanders of the same type are recommended. A limit of 4 cascaded expanders is supported.
Chassis and enclosures may be cascaded up to 4 deep, per wide port.
Must support both SAS1 and SAS2, and desirable to allow both within the same domain.
CLI supports in-band firmware downloads to the enclosure processor.
A list of supported enclosures is available at
http://www.lsi.com/channel/support/marketing_resources, through the Data & Interoperability tab.
Operating System
3ware 9750 RAID controllers may be used with the following operating systems for Intel and AMD 32-bit and 64-bit x86 based motherboards:

| Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (SP2 or newer) and 2008

| Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows 7

| Red Hat Enterprise Linux®

| openSUSE® Linux

| SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server

| Fedora Core Linux

| Other Linux distributions based on open source Linux 2.6 kernel

| VMware

| OpenSolaris

| FreeBSD

| Mac OS X (Intel only)

For the latest supported operating systems, see the current Release Notes at http://www.lsi.com/channel/ChannelDownloads or the file versions.txt, available on the 3ware CD.
Other Requirements

| Adequate air flow and cooling

| Adequate power supply for drives

| 3DM2 (3ware Disk Manager 2) displays information in a browser. It requires one of the following browsers:

| Internet Explorer® (current version)

| Mozilla Firefox® (current version)

| Safari® (current version)

In addition:

| JavaScript must be enabled.

| Cookies must be enabled.

| For best viewing, screen resolution should be 1024 x 768 or greater, with 16-bit color or greater.

For a complete listing of features and system requirements, refer to the 3ware SATA+SAS RAID Controller datasheets, available from the website at
http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/megaraid/sassata/index.html.

Related Topics
  Highlights of the 10.2 Release
  Understanding RAID Concepts and Levels
  3ware Tools for Configuration and Management
  Monitoring, Maintenance, and Troubleshooting Features

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