HP G7 with MSA70 have some questions.

I

Ideon

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Hi everyone!

I haven’t posted on here in a while but I’m kinda new to network storage and I wanted to upgrade my home file server which is just a old computer with 4x 3Tb drives in it running server 2012’s software raid 5 on it.

I wanted to move to some more hardware raid based as well as more suited for server type work so I was able to pick up a HP G7 with 2x Xeon quad core’s @ 2.4ghz and 36gb of memory 2gb x18 and a P410I raid controller card with 512mb and BBU for $200 bucks. I was then looking for a storage box to expand the drives capacity and found a HP MSA70 for $150 shipped.
I had to buy a PCIe card for the G7 for the SFF8088 ports out the back to connect to the MSA70. So I found a LSI 488765-B21 48910-001 HP SC08Ge 2Ports EXT PCIe SAS HBA on ebay for $20 bucks so I thought hey nice price and I ordered it.

For the hard drives I am currently using 14 76g 10K sas drives for testing but wil be buying WD Red 1tb drives once I can finish testing and can see that this setup will do what I want it to do for future expansion. I will be starting out with about 12-16 1tb drives and I will want to expand the raid array as I need more storage space.

I also installed a 16gb SD card into the motherboard of the G7 to install ESXI 5.5 onto. I know 16gb is over kill but I wanted faster R/W speeds and amazon had it on sale for 7 bucks ;)

In a nut shell I want this to be able to boot from the SD card to ESXI (which it currently does) then create one large volume with the 1tb drives to store everything onto. I will be using some of the space for VMware labs as well as hold all of my files from my older file server.

I know have everything and put it all together but when the server boots up it boots the P410I card first so if I go into the config utility it only shows the 8 internal drives and not the ones that are in the MSA70 box. After that boots it loads the LSI card and displays those drives that are currently in it.

How do I get the LSI card to pass its information over to the P410I card? My research shows that the P410I card is meant to handle 108 drives. 4x MSA70’s + the 8 internal drives. I’ve looked at the boot order in the servers BIOS and I’m not sure if I’m missing something. Am I on the right track?

I apologize for the lengthy post but I wanted to give as much detail as possible and explain what’s happening.

Thank you in advance!
 
Those cards are not compatable with each other, they use different firmware, and appear to be different models also. So you have to configure each one seperately.

The fact a card supports x drives, doesn't mean you just add more ports to get to that limit. It supports those drives by using sas expanders (the msa70 has one in it).

So you could plug a like 4 msa70's into one card, but not 5 or 6.
 
Thanks for the reply and I get what you are saying about the msa70 having a SAS expander in it already. The reason I bought the 20 dollar LSI card is so I could connect the msa70 to the G7 server. Or is there another card that I should be using that will let me connect the G7 to the msa70?
 
That lsi card is only an hba, and only supports upto 2tb disks.

There is no raid functions on that card (it *might* have basic raid1 and raid10 support, but no memory/battery to help it not be painfully slow).

Basically you have 4 options I can think of.

Use software raid on that shelf, and export the drives as a nfs or iscsi to vmware.

Get a new raid card for that shelf

Get a raid card that is compatable with your existing one, if that model even supports this feature, so you can use the msa70 disks + the internal disks in the same raid group (doesn't sound like you need this option).

Connect the internal disks to only one port on the hp raid card (need to install an expander cause it sounds like you have 8 disks), and install the msa70 into the other port using a hole or pcibracket mounted slot for the cable.


Basically, what happened, is the lsi card you have, was made for software raid, or if you don't want to use raid at all.
 
Ahh ok so the LSI card is no good for this. Thankfully I only spent 20 bucks on it lol.

I do want to run the 8 internal drives as well as the 25 in the msa70 as one large volume to use as storage. Do I need to look into a new card to replace the LSI as well as the HP P410I? If so what cord would be best for this?
I am thinking I will need 2x internal sff connectors for the internal 8 drives and one external 8088 connection to connect to the msa70?

Does this sound right?
 
How far apart is the G7 and the MSA70?

All you need is to hook the onboard P410i to the MSA70 and use the onboard P410i to raid up the drives in the MSA70

Search ebay for either a SFF-8087 to SFF-8088 cable and poke it straight out the back of the G7 into the MSA70

or buy a more neater setup like say
http://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-Dual-port-Assembly-Internal-External/dp/B00EXUEACC

then a SFF-8088 to SFF-8088 cable to join the two up.
 
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They are sitting on top of each other in my server rack.

I thought about doing a 8087 to 8088 cable out to the msa70 but then id loose 4 of the internal drives as the P410I only has 2 SFF-8087 ports on it. I found that card on listed on ebay yesterday for $150 so i pulled the trigger on that and it's coming from the same state as me so the shipping should be pretty quick to get to me.

I like the part you listed though. Seems like it might of worked and for half the price if i went with a card with 4 internal SFF ports on it.
 
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