Photosynthesis, for example, is a way that plants take energy from the abiotic environment and incorporate it into the biotic environment by synthesizing sugars and proteins from it. Other components of the biotic environment, such as herbivores, eat the plants and transfer the nutrients further along the chain.
Source: Adaptec. Backplanes are the fundamental building block to any storage appliance that is meant to support hot plugging. So, SAS expanders will always go hand in hand with powerful backplanes (whether these are in a single box or not).
Backplane: The terms backplane is synonymous to motherboard. Its a circuit board that contains sockets into which other circuit boards are plugged in. There are 2 types of backplane : 1- Active and 2- Passive Active backplanes: Besides sockets, they also contain logical circuitry that performs computing functions. Passive backplanes:They do not contain any computing circuitry.