This may be a dumb question as this is the first time I play with server chassis. I am trying to connect the front panel of the Supermicro chassis (SC829HE1C4-R1K02LPB), which contains 12 front drives slots to a MB H12SSL-i motherboard. No RAID card, I just want to use the SATA connectors of the motherboard.
The motherboard has a 8 regular SATA ports and a SlimSASx8 port which I understand can do another 8 SATA ports (so 16 in total).
Then I hope I am using the right cables.
For the MB's SlimSASx8, CBL-SAST-0826
For the MB's regular SATA ports, I am using a reverse breakout cable, which I understand is what is needed to connect 8 motherboard ports to a single MiniSAS port on the chassis: CBL-SAST-0591
The chassis is where I am starting to get confused. The chassis contains 2 sets of 4x MiniSAS ports, so 8 in total. If I understand the chassis manual correctly (but I wouldn't bet on that), the ports on the right of the picture below are failover ports for redundancy, and the ports on the left are the primary ports. However all schematics in the chassis manual are only showing two MiniSAS ports being connected to the HBA, never 3 (which I do not understand, there are 12 drives, I understand a MiniSAS can carry 4 SATA connections, so surely there should be at least 3 ports connected?).
Either way I tried to connect my cables to the ports on the left and to the ports on the right, and I tried connecting a SATA Hard Drive in various slots, and every time the disk is not recognized by the OS, and doesn't appear in the BIOS under SATA information either. The power cables seem to be OK (the drive is hot and rotating).
So I am wondering if I am doing anything wrong? Perhaps I use the wrong cables? Or do I misunderstand completely what the primary vs secondary sets of ports means? Or can you think of any other reason why the motherboard doesn't see the drive?
The motherboard has a 8 regular SATA ports and a SlimSASx8 port which I understand can do another 8 SATA ports (so 16 in total).
Then I hope I am using the right cables.
For the MB's SlimSASx8, CBL-SAST-0826
For the MB's regular SATA ports, I am using a reverse breakout cable, which I understand is what is needed to connect 8 motherboard ports to a single MiniSAS port on the chassis: CBL-SAST-0591
The chassis is where I am starting to get confused. The chassis contains 2 sets of 4x MiniSAS ports, so 8 in total. If I understand the chassis manual correctly (but I wouldn't bet on that), the ports on the right of the picture below are failover ports for redundancy, and the ports on the left are the primary ports. However all schematics in the chassis manual are only showing two MiniSAS ports being connected to the HBA, never 3 (which I do not understand, there are 12 drives, I understand a MiniSAS can carry 4 SATA connections, so surely there should be at least 3 ports connected?).
Either way I tried to connect my cables to the ports on the left and to the ports on the right, and I tried connecting a SATA Hard Drive in various slots, and every time the disk is not recognized by the OS, and doesn't appear in the BIOS under SATA information either. The power cables seem to be OK (the drive is hot and rotating).
So I am wondering if I am doing anything wrong? Perhaps I use the wrong cables? Or do I misunderstand completely what the primary vs secondary sets of ports means? Or can you think of any other reason why the motherboard doesn't see the drive?
