Supermicro 846A Backplane on-board SATA locator lights

[System48]

I'm doing my first proper server build and bought a used SC846 with the BPN-SAS-846A backplane. I'm using the X11SPH-nCTPF motherboard and the first two ports on the backplane go to the IPASS SATA ports on the board. The activity lights work as expected but the locator lights won't toggle on through the Intel RSTe GUI, running Windows Server 2016. The rest of the backplane goes to the on-board SAS and a SAS add-in card and the locator lights toggle fine through the Megaraid console. I'm using Supermicro cable, CBL-0421L, so it has sideband. I have a case opened on the issue but wasn't sure if I was overlooking something obvious that maybe other people have seen.

 

[i386]

Locations leds are enabled/disabled through ses2 (an extension for scsi enclosure mangagement). Sata controllers do not support it.

More information about ses2: SES-2 Enclosure Management - Wikipedia

 

[System48]

Locations leds are enabled/disabled through ses2 (an extension for scsi enclosure mangagement). Sata controllers do not support it.

More information about ses2: SES-2 Enclosure Management - Wikipedia

The LED's can also be controlled through SGPIO commands which Intel's RSTe does support. There's a lack of utilities for Windows to test things out so I did a quick linux boot usb to try out the ledctl utility and confirmed it can toggle the location LEDs. So this appears to be an OS/driver level issue.

On a side note, after further digging on SES with this backplane, apparently SES isn't used on some LSI/Broadcomm/Avago cards, at least when in IT mode.