The following may be common knowledge, but I was at quite a loss, and found the details in the following email with SM quite helpful. I hope it is found useful to others. We are discussing the SC216 chassis, but this should apply to all.
For the chassis naming, A means the chassis uses direct connect backplane and E means the chassis uses expander backplane. BA and BE are the same as A and E except they have the option to install 2 additional 2.5” drives on the rear of the chassis.
Example: For 216A/BA chassis, it has 24 front slots (+2 rear for BA). The 24 drives will be connected by one or multiple RAID cards that has 24 ports. The drives are one-to-one connected via iPass to iPass cables.
For 216E/BE chassis, it has 24 front slots (+2 rear for BE). The 24 drives will be connected by one RAID cards and expand out to all drives. You will just need one 4 port card with one iPass to iPass cable.
The numbers after 216BA/BE/A/E are the power supply wattage. For example, 216BA-R1K28LPB means it is a black 216 chassis with rear 2x 2.5” optional drives using direct-connect backplane. Chassis also has redundant 1200W power supplies, with low profile PCIe slots.
For the chassis naming, A means the chassis uses direct connect backplane and E means the chassis uses expander backplane. BA and BE are the same as A and E except they have the option to install 2 additional 2.5” drives on the rear of the chassis.
Example: For 216A/BA chassis, it has 24 front slots (+2 rear for BA). The 24 drives will be connected by one or multiple RAID cards that has 24 ports. The drives are one-to-one connected via iPass to iPass cables.
For 216E/BE chassis, it has 24 front slots (+2 rear for BE). The 24 drives will be connected by one RAID cards and expand out to all drives. You will just need one 4 port card with one iPass to iPass cable.
The numbers after 216BA/BE/A/E are the power supply wattage. For example, 216BA-R1K28LPB means it is a black 216 chassis with rear 2x 2.5” optional drives using direct-connect backplane. Chassis also has redundant 1200W power supplies, with low profile PCIe slots.
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