HP SAS Expander Owner's Thread

mwroobel said:
You will see no appreciable difference. In many/most cases, the >8 (Some 12, depending on SOC) lane boards are all expander-inclusive, meaning that the board has an expander of their own. Going with the higher port count card will save you a slot, will remove cabling from the inside of your case and will in most cases give you more consistent support for the highest speed per lane (Some HP expanders for example may only negotiate SATA150 when they are SATA300 or SATA600, and there is no rhyme or reason with board rev or with firmware version. I have seen it with some Intel's as well)
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Thanks for the speedy response...

So I should set up a bit of a test with my 4 x spare 3Tb drives in something speedy like Raid0 ? and test on the card and then on the expander?
 
Is there a step by step for flashing firmware using one of the supported HP raid cards mentioned in the OP? I read the whole thread and found references to the procedure being in the OP but I don't see it.

I found this describing how to make the update work on non-HP machines:

BENN0 said:
You don't need a HP server but you'll have to circumvent the check on the firmware update CD that tests for HP hardware. I created a bootable USB pen drive from the Firmware Update CD (as described on the HP site). In the root of the USB pen drive there is a file 'blacklist'. I edited out all the values between the "<ids> </ ids>" tags (the file is read-only so change its attributes first). Now the firmware update utility will run without checking if is running on supported HP hardware.

If you just burned the ISO to a CD you can also boot that and if you hold left CTRL key and then press enter when the first menu comes up "HP Firmware Maintenance 8.60" then it won't give you the stop message that it's not an HP system. (thanks odditory for this work around).
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I also found a procedure for doing a firmware update without an HP raid card: http://serverfault.com/questions/631574/how-to-upgrade-the-firmware-of-hp-sas-expander-card-without-smart-array-controll

One of the commenters mentioned his reported firmware version didn't bump after the update. That doesn't sound good so I grabbed an HP P212 off ebay in hopes of flashing "the right way."

I'm not sure about linking to ebay auctions but the seller I bought my P212 from has a ton of them for $11 with free ship. A search for "HP P212" should find it.
 
Hi

Not sure if there is much interest in this now, but in my Norco I used the Supermicro JOBOD power board (old one) and a PCI-e slot intended for mining.

Works a treat and at £4 for the power board much less hassle than an old motherboard or indeed a SBC riser/daughterboard.

The mining board looks to have a 3.3v regulator on it as its clearly 5 and 12v from the molex.




Happy days.

David
 
I have used the same one (with black PCB, however) and written about it on previous page :)
Nice to see it works for you as well!
 
BestGear said:
Hi

Not sure if there is much interest in this now, but in my Norco I used the Supermicro JOBOD power board (old one) and a PCI-e slot intended for mining.

Works a treat and at £4 for the power board much less hassle than an old motherboard or indeed a SBC riser/daughterboard.

The mining board looks to have a 3.3v regulator on it as its clearly 5 and 12v from the molex.

Happy days.

David
Click to expand...

Do you need the PCIe x1 connected for it to deliver power?

Also I have a FW 1.52 edition and connected it with two cables to M1015 in IT mode. But it seems to be running at 3 gbps for some reason and it has 6 Gbps capable in presiseres. How do I get them over to 6 Gbps? :S
 
Rudde93 said:
Do you need the PCIe x1 connected for it to deliver power?

Also I have a FW 1.52 edition and connected it with two cables to M1015 in IT mode. But it seems to be running at 3 gbps for some reason and it has 6 Gbps capable in presiseres. How do I get them over to 6 Gbps? :S
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Hi

No need for the pcie connector - just the molex.

As I understand it, the expander will only deliver 6gb with SAS drives not SATA.

Unless you are running SSD's I doubt if you need 6gb....
 
Given the age of the P410, and the availability of the P420 at a decent price point, has anyone test the P420 with the HP SAS Expander?
 
I'm testing out one of these HP SAS Expander cards with an IBM ServeRAID M5016 controller (LSI 9265-8i rebadge). I'm not sure how to tell if dual linking is working or not. I tried the SAS Expander connected with two SFF-8087 cables to the M5016, as well as trying only one cable connected to a single port.

With a single port I see in the MSM GUI that it's connected to either 0-3 or 4-7 depending on which port I use. With both SFF-8087 cables connecting the two the MSM GUI shows it connected to ports 4-7, not ports 0-7. I have no idea if that's just how MSM / M5016 shows dual linking or if it's only connecting over one of the cables.

Is there any way to tell from the CLI or the MSM GUI if the expander is connecting via Dual Link to the SAS controller? If not, how can you tell?
 
Long time stalker, first time poster.

I've seen a lot of mention in this thread about these expanders having issues sometimes where they negotiate at 1.5Gb/s even with the newer firmware versions.

I just got a new one of these cards off eBay, and the negotiated speed is 1.5Gb/s regardless of the drive's possible speed (tried 3 and 6 Gb/s drives).

RAID/HBA cards tested: LSI 9261-8i, 9211-8i(IR)
Expander FW: Originally 2.06, flashed to 2.10(c)
Backplane: Norco RPC-4224

I'm not sure if I should have the seller exchange it for a different one, or if this is just a compatability issue and it will never work with my setup.

Anyone have any ideas on this?
 
Computergeek24 said:
Long time stalker, first time poster.

I've seen a lot of mention in this thread about these expanders having issues sometimes where they negotiate at 1.5Gb/s even with the newer firmware versions.

I just got a new one of these cards off eBay, and the negotiated speed is 1.5Gb/s regardless of the drive's possible speed (tried 3 and 6 Gb/s drives).

RAID/HBA cards tested: LSI 9261-8i, 9211-8i(IR)
Expander FW: Originally 2.06, flashed to 2.10(c)
Backplane: Norco RPC-4224

I'm not sure if I should have the seller exchange it for a different one, or if this is just a compatability issue and it will never work with my setup.

Anyone have any ideas on this?
Click to expand...
It's hard to say. It could be the drives, the backplane, the expander, or the RAID/HBA card. Have you tried connecting the drives to the card without the expander to see if they connect faster? What about bypassing the backplane with a SFF-8087 to SATA cable connected direct to the SAS expander or to the RAID/HBA card?
 
Stereodude said:
It's hard to say. It could be the drives, the backplane, the expander, or the RAID/HBA card. Have you tried connecting the drives to the card without the expander to see if they connect faster? What about bypassing the backplane with a SFF-8087 to SATA cable connected direct to the SAS expander or to the RAID/HBA card?
Click to expand...

Tried all of those things with no luck. With the drives connected directly to the expander with a breakout cable, they're still negotiating at 1.5. Anything connected to the RAID/HBA cards directly or through the backplane negotiates at the spec of the drive (3 and 6).
 
Computergeek24 said:
Tried all of those things with no luck. With the drives connected directly to the expander with a breakout cable, they're still negotiating at 1.5. Anything connected to the RAID/HBA cards directly or through the backplane negotiates at the spec of the drive (3 and 6).
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I guess it could be the expander. It's hard to say. I'm certainly no expert on them.
 
I have dozens of these expanders in various machines both at home and at work. When installed in a Proliant, with all HP hardware in the chain (Controller, expander, enclosure/backplane, drive etc) they negotiate the proper and expected speeds 100% of the time. When installed with third party hardware (it seems to happen most often with SATA drives) then all bets are off and it usually defaults to SATA150.
 
Weird. The general consensus on this thread seemed to be that I "should" have been able to get 3Gb/s with my 3 and 6 SATA drives.
 
Computergeek24 said:
Weird. The general consensus on this thread seemed to be that I "should" have been able to get 3Gb/s with my 3 and 6 SATA drives.
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It linked up with my SATA drives at 3.0Gbps. I tried 3 different SATA drives from Seagate, Samsung, and Toshiba. I haven't put any backplanes into play though.
 
Stereodude said:
It linked up with my SATA drives at 3.0Gbps. I tried 3 different SATA drives from Seagate, Samsung, and Toshiba. I haven't put any backplanes into play though.
Click to expand...

What RAID/HBA card were you using and what firmware version is on your expander? I'm starting to wonder if there are different PCB revisions of the expander that might have something to do with this.
 
Computergeek24 said:
What RAID/HBA card were you using and what firmware version is on your expander? I'm starting to wonder if there are different PCB revisions of the expander that might have something to do with this.
Click to expand...
IBM ServeRAID M5016 (LSI 9265-8i equivalent). The FW on my expander is 2.08.
 
Hi !

I own a Unraid server i've build since few years.
I have a LSI HBA 9207-8i on it and a HP expander 487738-001
I have upgraded the HP firmware from 2.02 to 2.10 yesterday everything is working fine.

But on my Unraid server all disks are operating in SATA 1.5 Gbs in place of 3 Gbs

My question, i don't have pic of HP expander and i don't now what are the #8 and #9 ports... my HBA is linked to expander by the 2 ports on the bottom of the expander near the PCI-e port.

Is it correct ?
Someone could tell me what ports are #8 and #9 on the expander ? I would want to know what ii it not correct on my configuration.

Thanks.


For precision my server is build on a Norco 4020 case with sata backpanel
All drives are SATA 2 and SATA 3
 
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Thanks for your answer.

Then my HBA is correctly linked to expander...

Where is the problem with this expander and SATA 2 ?

I see on this forum that i am not the only one to experience difficulties...
 
Same speed of 1.5Gbs but i have never checked it before last week :)

I've upgraded today my LSI 9207-8i firmware and Bios to latest version... same result... 1.5Gbs speed
 
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I just bought the HP SAS Expander off eBay. I've connected it to a old motherboard, hooked up several drives and run a SAS cable to my Areca 1880. But I'm not seeing any of my drives hooked up to the HP SAS expander.

My Areca also times out if I try to boot with the expander connected.

Has anyone had this issue? Is it a problem with my HP SAS card or my Areca or something else?
 
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KNOWN ISSUES
1) HP SAS Expander will only negotiate SATA-III harddisks at 3G (SATA300) even though it is capable of 6G (SATA600). It does however negotiate SAS disks at 6G.
2) In combination with an Areca 1880 series controller, certain Western Digital harddisks (Velociraptor, etc) when configured in a raid volume will cause Areca boot-time firmware initialization to hang when connected to the HP SAS Expander. This is an issue Areca needs to resolve, but something to be aware of.
 
I've solve the speed problem by changing expander :D
I bought the new HP expander for SAS12 and then my SATA 3 disks are running at 6Gb/s
 
Hi everyone. As so many others, I've lurked these forums for a long time, but now I actually have a problem I can't seem to solve, and need your help :)

Anyway, I have the following:

HP H222 HBA
HP Microserver (for doing the firmwareupgrade)
HP 3Gbs Expander, came from eBay with firmware 1.00

So, I did a bit of reading, and came to the conclusion that I should try mounting the HBA in the microserver, and use a powered PCI-e riser to provide power to the expander. (similar to the one in post #2163 in this thread)
Then I downloaded the "Firmware update DVD" from HP, copied the .scexe-file to the required folder on the usb-stick, and booted the microserver. I checked the HBA, and found the expander there.
After a few minutes booting from the usb-stick, it found the expander, and stated that it did indeed have firmware 1.00, and wanted to upgrade it to 2.10. I pressed "ok", and a few minutes later, I was greeted with "success", a green checkbox and a text telling me to powercycle the server to make sure everything is up to date.

After this powercycle, I cannot contact the expander anymore. Not visible in the HBA bios, not visible under windows, not under linux, no drives are detected, and thus it seems like I have a brick on my hands.

I can't really see where I did wrong here... so my question is: Can I recover this card, or is it simply a paperweight now? If I did anything wrong in my upgrade-process, please tell me, so I can refrain from doing just that if I need to order another card...
 
Compassion said:
Given the age of the P410, and the availability of the P420 at a decent price point, has anyone test the P420 with the HP SAS Expander?
Click to expand...

Well these expanders are so cheap I just put in an offer for 2 of them on ebay for $50 each with cables. I have 2 DL380p gen8 servers I'm retiring that I'm going to try them in. The servers were connected to a san and didn't have local storage. I'm going to put 2 - 8 bay sff cages in and see if this expander works. I'll probably use these servers as a disk based backup with 16 - 2tb drives if this works.

Everything I've read is this will not work but I haven't seen anything that says it absolutely won't work. For $100 it's worth a try.
 
I was able to find the 2 locally on ebay and paid $119 with local tax. I'll report back if they work with the P420i. It's going to be a couple weeks before I can try this out.
 
has anyone tried to daisy chain an intel res2sv240 in to one of these an had any luck?

i tried last night and it did not work.

tried the 8088 port and the 8-9 ports.

drives would not even get recognized in my raid card (lsi-9260's) raid bios.

i know the drives are ok and the expander i used before (16 port ibm) worked with the intel expander.

any ideas?

also i tried swapping motherboards (for power only) out and that did not help either.
 
just tried the same setup with a different intel expander and different lsi 9260-4i card and it works just fine....

what's going on here.
 
solved my problem.

this expander needs moar power than the motherboard i was using (no cpu) was giving it.

swapped everything around and it's golden.
 
Hi, I have few questions:

I am cofused. I have found on ebay the model:
HP 24-Bay 3G PCI-e SAS Expander Card 487738-001

Is it the model I should purchase ?

Also, I have a IBM 1015 which seems to be an LSI 9240-8i. Should I flash it to LSI 9211-8i ?

Which cable are needed to connect the IBM card to the expander ?

Regards,
Giuseppe Chillemi
 
jlong said:
Well these expanders are so cheap I just put in an offer for 2 of them on ebay for $50 each with cables. I have 2 DL380p gen8 servers I'm retiring that I'm going to try them in. The servers were connected to a san and didn't have local storage. I'm going to put 2 - 8 bay sff cages in and see if this expander works. I'll probably use these servers as a disk based backup with 16 - 2tb drives if this works.

Everything I've read is this will not work but I haven't seen anything that says it absolutely won't work. For $100 it's worth a try.
Click to expand...

It works with the on board p420i. Unfortunately the lights on the drives don't work. Sucks, at least it works.
 
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Kx2000 said:
I've solve the speed problem by changing expander :D
I bought the new HP expander for SAS12 and then my SATA 3 disks are running at 6Gb/s
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Long time stalker, first time poster.
I bought the HP 12G SAS Expander (769635-B21, the kit with the cables for ML350, 99,99% is the same board as 727250-B21 but with different cables), connected it to an LSI 3008 flashed with Avago IT v9 firmware embedded in a Supermicro X10SRH-CLN4F and hooked up a 24 bay 6gbps backplane filled with 8 4TB WD Red (It'll be filled with 16 drives when finished). With the SAS expander I can see the drives from the controller bios, but when I boot in FreeNAS/any other OS I can't see any of them. Without the SAS expander they work.
Which firmware does use your 12G SAS expander? Mine uses 1.01 (the first firmware ever released), and I can see in the changelog of 1.31 that they corrected a bug that forced slower backplanes to higher data rates.
Is it possible to update this 12G SAS expander with an old (and cheap) Smart Array controller like the P210/410/420 on non HP hardware?
 
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