The BlueStor™ PCIe x8 Extender Storage System is a one-of-a-kind product allowing PCI Express bus expansion from a host server. The BlueStor™ Extender provides five PCIe expansion slots in an external 3U rackmount also containing 16 hot-swap SAS/SATA disk drive bays and a SAS Expander. Plugging a PCIe SAS RAID controller (compatible product list available) into one of the Extender slots builds a RAID storage system. Other slots may be used as needed for other peripherals.
Each BlueStor™ PCIe Extender has an x8 port for the host connection, plus one x8 PCIe slot and four x4 PCIe slots. To concatenate Extenders, simply plug in a PCIe adapter card into the x8 slot and use an x8 PCIe external cable to another Extender. Hundreds of configurations are possible using this unique full-bandwidth extension system!
As with all other BlueStor™ 3U rackmount products, the PCIe Extender utilizes hot-swappable, lightweight, low-cost, vibration-dampening resin disk drive canisters with integrated light pipes, latching handles and EMI shields. These are interchangeable amongst all BlueStor™ 3U rackmounts. The PCIe Extender also features N+1 hot-swappable cooling elements with centrifugal blowers mounted in noise and vibration-dampening resin modules and N+1 hot-swappable power supplies which are all interchangeable with the BlueStor™ SAS Expander and PeSAN™ RAID rackmounts for simplified, low-cost spares programs.
All BlueStor™ rackmounts are SES 2.0 compliant and have been compatibility confirmed with every SAS and SATA-2 (3.5” form factor) disk drive on the market. Each unit has a Physical User Interface including real-time disk activity/failure status indicators, power and cooling status with audible and visible alarms, and front panel “on-off” and “alarm reset” switches, as well as rear-panel PCIe “link status” indicators.
The x8 PCIe Extender is available as model EXTN-8.
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