Mini-SAS Connector Issue

Question

allow me to apologize in advance, because I am horribly uneducated in this realm, yet I find myself with this problem:

My company hired ProMax to setup all of our networking in our office. One of the things they set up was a 24TB Stardom RAID SOHOTANK ST8-U5. The cables that came with that setup were, as I understand it, passive Mini-SAS cables with external (SFF-8088) connectors. Our company recently ordered new, longer cables that were active with the same connectors.

My issue arises here, because the cables we got have small raised metal notch on the connectors. I'm not sure if this is due to a version difference or due to the passive/active difference.

Here are photos of the aforementioned connectors:

enter image description here

Can you elaborate on the problem you're having with the new cables? — ewwhite, Sep 02 '14 at 22:55

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 02 '14 at 23:44

1

The notch indicates that it's an active cable that requires power from the device it's attached to. Not all devices support active cables, though all equipment I've used does support them (I'm particularly hesitant of that off-brand disk shelf). In any case, if the device doesn't support active cables then the cable should not latch all the way into the device, making the incompatibility obvious.

Also, all the cables pictured in this question are SAS 2.0 (6Gb), where there is no directionality to the cable. The three little groves in the middle of the connector were originally to key direction (the center groove was always present, but the right and left were only on one end of the cable to correspond with the "in" and "out" of the SAS device they were plugged into). The older SAS 1 cables are compatible with SAS 2 devices - SAS 3 (12Gb) breaks this compatibility with different connectors).

answered Sep 02 '14 at 23:44

Chris S

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I don't see a notch. – ewwhite Sep 02 '14 at 23:49
Under the latching mechanism, in "blocking key position 5". The 3 grooves are "key positions" 2, 4, and 6, so look between the two grooves on the left in his bottom picture. – Chris S Sep 02 '14 at 23:56
Hmm, never seen a variance on those... but the enclosure should be accommodating either way, no? – ewwhite Sep 02 '14 at 23:58
Only if the receptacle supplies 3.3v to the cable... It *should*, but it's not *required* by the spec. – Chris S Sep 03 '14 at 00:03
1

Which begs the question... did the OP plug it in? – ewwhite Sep 03 '14 at 00:04

ewwhite · Answer 2 · 2014-09-02T23:51:05.850

-1

SAS SFF-8088 cables follow the same standard. There aren't any variants I'm aware of on the connector. They're all 4-lane 3Gbps or 6Gbps SAS connectors meant for external use; usually linking a server to a storage or disk array. The raised notch you're speaking of may just be the locking mechanism for the connector.

Have you tried connecting the newer cables to your devices? What problem are you seeing?

enter image description here

edited Sep 02 '14 at 23:51

answered Sep 02 '14 at 22:49

ewwhite

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Mini-SAS Connector Issue

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