Mid-Plane Options; Passive Mid-Plane; Figure 32. Passive Mid-Plane Board - Intel SR1500 - AXXMINIDIMM DDR-2 RAID Controller Cache Memory Manual

5BPeripheral and Hard Drive Sub-System
6.4

Mid-plane Options

New to this generation of high density server platform is the concept of the mid-plane. The mid-
plane is the interconnect between the server board and both the hot-swap backplane and
control panel. It is also used to determine which hard drive technology is to be supported. Two
different Mid-plane options are available for this platform 1) a passive mid-plane capable of
supporting SATA ports from the server board or SAS using ports from an add-in card; 2) an
active SAS / SAS RAID mid-plane. This section will describe the hard drive interface support of
each of the mid-plane boards.
6.4.1

Passive Mid-plane

The passive mid-plane is used as an interconnect, routing drive control signals from either the
on-board SATA ports of the baseboard or SAS/SATA ports from an add-in card to the hot-swap
backplane. The hard drive controller signals are cabled to the mid-plane which then routes the
signals to the hot-swap backplane through two edge connectors that plug directly into it. See
Table 22. Mid-plane-to-Backplane Card Edge Connector #1 Pin-out and Table 23. Mid-plane-to-
Backplane Card Edge Connector #2 Pin-out.
A Power Connector
B Fan 6 Connector
C Fan 5 Connector
D SAS/SATA Connectors
E Bridge Board Connector
48
C
B
D
A
E
J
Figure 33. Passive Mid-plane Board
Intel order number D31980-009
Intel® Server System SR2500AL
F
G
H
I
AF000047
F Fan 4 Connector
G Fan 3 Connector
H Fan 1 Connector
I Fan 2 Connector
J Backplane Connector
Revision – 1.6