SGPIO on 8 bay hotswap supermicro/others with onboard 6 port SATA (RED LED's)

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TheBay

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Feb 25, 2013
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Ever wondered why 2 hotswap bay lights flash RED?,

I have had this asked as lot as people think it's a fault and even supermicro tell people to unplug the SGPIO connection! It's not a fault at all.

The onboard SATA ports are divided in 2 sections on the motherboard with 2 SGPIO connections. SGPIO#1 is for ports 0-3 and SPGIO#2 is for ports 4-5.

As ports 6-7 don't exist the SGPIO command is being sent to the backplane to flash 2 error/fail LEDs on bays 6/7 to tell you please don't put drives in me as I don't exist.

Just thought i'd put this little bit of info here if anyone needs to know this.
 
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badatSAS

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Nov 7, 2012
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I have to be honest, I've wondered how to tell if my SGPIO is working or not on my case. My SC745 came with the SCSI backplane so I had to put the SAS backplane in myself. There are different jumper settings for either SGPIO or i2c mode, and it came defaulted to i2c. I have SAS cables with sideband running to a Dell H700 - do I still need a seperate SGPIO cable? Is sideband = SGPIO?

Thanks for anyone that can clear up my confusion
 

TheBay

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Feb 25, 2013
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I have to be honest, I've wondered how to tell if my SGPIO is working or not on my case. My SC745 came with the SCSI backplane so I had to put the SAS backplane in myself. There are different jumper settings for either SGPIO or i2c mode, and it came defaulted to i2c. I have SAS cables with sideband running to a Dell H700 - do I still need a seperate SGPIO cable? Is sideband = SGPIO?

Thanks for anyone that can clear up my confusion
Which sas backplane, the one with 8xSata or 2XSAS?

For the 8x Sata you need a SFF-8087 forward fanout with 4x SATA + 1x sideband (SGPIO), set jumpers to SGPIO. If using SFF-8087 you need SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 which is wired for sideband, again set for SGPIO.

I2C usually uses a small 4 pin cable, don't worry about that.

If you use Linux I can tell you some commands to type to get the lights to flash, but drives must be present in the bays for the error/fail lights to flash.

And commands are different to what controller you are using either onboard intel or HBA/RAID as a different package is required to be installed.
 

badatSAS

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Nov 7, 2012
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Boston, MA
I have the 8xSATA - BPN-SAS-743TQ (I didn't know they made one with just the two SAS connections). I have the SFF-8087 forward fanout with 4xSATA+1x sideband.

Currently passing the H700 (LSI9260-8i) through to a windows 2012 VM via VTd. I keep expecting an enclosure to show up in megaraid storage manager or something, should it be?
 

TheBay

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Feb 25, 2013
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They do but not for a 74x chassis apart from all in one caddy's but you seem to shoehorn things in there so had to ask :D.

Set the backplane up for SGPIO, supermicro like to confuse people, jumpers 1+2 are starting from the right to left, 3.2.1. however SGPIO won't make any difference to showing up in the OS. Is the option rom set to BIOS and OS on the card?
 
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rnavarro

Active Member
Feb 14, 2013
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Which sas backplane, the one with 8xSata or 2XSAS?

For the 8x Sata you need a SFF-8087 forward fanout with 4x SATA + 1x sideband (SGPIO), set jumpers to SGPIO. If using SFF-8087 you need SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 which is wired for sideband, again set for SGPIO.

I2C usually uses a small 4 pin cable, don't worry about that.

If you use Linux I can tell you some commands to type to get the lights to flash, but drives must be present in the bays for the error/fail lights to flash.

And commands are different to what controller you are using either onboard intel or HBA/RAID as a different package is required to be installed.
What linux commands might those be? Inquiring minds wish to know! :)
 

TheBay

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Feb 25, 2013
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What linux commands might those be? Inquiring minds wish to know! :)
I'm too lazy to type out instructions tonight, I'm exhausted. But I just found this which might be a better reference guide rather than me putting millions of commands and switches for every config.

sgpio - Unix, Linux Command

Also there is another package called ledmon/ledctl, that seems to work better with intel on board controllers.