RES3FV288 problems

[Fireball81]

Hey guys,

so i purchased a Intel RES3FV288 SAS expander and connected the SAS3008 of my Supermicro X11SSL-CF to it.
The thing that bothers me is the following:

As you guys are well aware, the Intel SAS expander has 7 (internal) channels (from A to G)
When i connect channel A-E to the backplane of my 19" chassi, everything works as intented and i get 20 drives overall.
Unfortunately though, channel F and G doesn`t seem to work when drives are attached directly to it. (through the SAS backplane of my case of course)
According to the documentation of the Intel RES3FV288 port G is a wide port and should be connected to the HBA but port F should work with drives directly attached.
What makes me curious is the fact that, in the bios of my X11SSL-CF i can overview all the drives attached to the HBA (over the expander)
The controller sees the 4 drives when connected to channel F but they all apear under the same physical disk number (0:0:0)
This only happens when connected to channel F and G so maybe they are not meant to be used for harddrives directly?

I updated the firmware of both, the SAS expander and the HBA but so far nothing changed.
Maybe someone who has more experience with the SAS3008 can help me out here and clarify things a little bit.

Thanks
Dennis

 

[Snow]

From the manual

(Intel® Integrated RAID Module RMS3VC160 Hardware User Guide9Supported Intel SAS Expanders include an array of multiport mini-SAS HD (8643) connectors. Some are used as Output connectors to a backplane, while others are used as Input connectors from the RAID Controller. The following diagrams identify the connector types for each supported SAS expander card.)

F & G are for SAS Raid Cards Only

Link to manual