HP SAS Expander Owner's Thread

All are updated to 2.02 already by our techs. Once purchased its up to the customer to update firmware, although it is my understanding that an HP Raid controller is required to do so.
 
It seems here are a lot of people with experience concerning the HP Expanders active here. Maybe someone can help me with my current setup consisting of a LSI 9211-8i HBA connected to a HP Expander. I tried two different SATA drives (WD5000AADS and Samsung HD103SI), both run with only 1.5Gbps while the expander uplinks run with only 3Gbps. The controller was updated to the newest BIOS and Firmware version and should be able to do 6Gbps. As far as I understood the expander should be able to run with 6 Gbps from the controller and 3 Gbps to the drives.

If the drives are directly connected to the controller they negotiate 3Gbps. The HBA Bios as well as the linux driver reports "HP SAS EXP Card 2.02". If this is the firmware revision, it should also be capable of running at SATAII speeds. I also tried with an Intel/LSI SASUC8I card, still the drives ran at only 1.5Gbps.

At the moment I do not know how to resolve this. Maybe someone can point me at to what to try first.

Thank you!
 
I ordered an Intel SASUC8I this weekend and will see what happens. The Areca 1680LP doesn't have that issue.

TBH, if the drives only operate at SATA I speeds, that is not a huge loss of performance.
 
Considering a single 2 TB drive can stream at 120 MB/s a 1.5Gbps link can be almost saturated including protocol overhead. Not to mention that I have to connect SSDs directly to the controller as some of these can already cap a 3.0 Gbps link.

Can the firmware revision of the expander be determined using a Non-HP controller?
 
omniscence said:
Considering a single 2 TB drive can stream at 120 MB/s a 1.5Gbps link can be almost saturated including protocol overhead. Not to mention that I have to connect SSDs directly to the controller as some of these can already cap a 3.0 Gbps link.

Can the firmware revision of the expander be determined using a Non-HP controller?
Click to expand...

If your current controller reports your HP SAS Expander as "HP SAS EXP Card 2.02", than your expander firmware is at version 2.02!
 
I have a question I hope somone here might know the answer to...

OK looking up specs of SATA cable length it says MAX length is 1m

So, question is.....

is that say 50cm cable from controller to say SAS expander, then 50cm from expander to drives.

or does a SAS expander work like a network switch and resend the signal again... so you could have 1m from controller to SAS expander, then another 1m from SAS expander to drives?

ie like a network and CAT 5 you have a limit of 100m say between devices....but when connected to a switch and you can have 100m from device to switch, then as the signal is repeated by the switch you have another 100m up your sleeve from switch onto the next device?

naturally SAS doesn't have the SATA length limitation.... so this probably does apply to SAS drives

Thanks
 
You can have a 1m long cable between the expander and HBA and then another 1m cable between the drives and expander. That won't be a problem.
 
Each port on the expander has a dedicated PHY and controller that will negotiate the partners link capabilities. The SAS expander basically works the same way an Ethernet switch works. Since the SAS link is based on the physical SATA interface, any limitations/restrictions from the SATA interface apply to the SAS interface as well, with some minor differences.
 
EDIT:

If anyone is looking for controllers to mate up with expanders. PM me. We might have stock.
 
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Blue Fox said:
You can have a 1m long cable between the expander and HBA and then another 1m cable between the drives and expander. That won't be a problem.
Click to expand...

SAS2 is supposed to support longer cable lengths of up to 10(?)m.
But i couldn't tell you if that would require a new sas2 controller, expander, cables and drives, or if old cables are ok with a sas2 controller, expander and drives.
 
Thank You for sharing your solution to mounting the HP Expander in a Norco. I have just completed my install with a Norco 4220. I did have to drill custom holes AND remove the large black connectors on the backside. The 4220 has a raised motherboard mounting surface which would not allow perfect mounting with the underside connectors attached. The question I have concerns the power switch. Have you figured out how to use the case on/off switch to control the power?


odditory said:
. This means, for now, that the power switch on my power supply is going to have to function as the "On/Off" switch for the case until I do some more testing.


1_104.jpg

4_39.jpg

3_50.jpg
Click to expand...
 
I wasn't able to get the expander working with 3.0 Gbps drive-side. Does anyone have it working at that speed with an LSI 1068E or SAS2008 based controller? I'm using fan-out cables to connect the drives. Can this be the reason?
 
omniscence said:
I wasn't able to get the expander working with 3.0 Gbps drive-side. Does anyone have it working at that speed with an LSI 1068E or SAS2008 based controller? I'm using fan-out cables to connect the drives. Can this be the reason?
Click to expand...

I'm running an HP Expander from an LSI 1068E built-in to my mobo (Asus P5BV/SAS). I'm using a reverse fan-out cable from the mobo (SATA connectors) to the expander (SFF8087), and forward fan-out cables from the expander (SFF8087) to the backplane of my Norco 4020 (SATA connectors). I believe my drives are running at 3Gbps; never had any reason to suspect otherwise. I'll try to verify for sure when I get home tonight.

One thing to check would your fan-out cables. Do the have the right directionality? Because that does matter, reverse cables would not work from expander to drives and forward cables would not work from controller to expander.
 
The problem is not, that it does not work. The drives just run at 1.5Gbps with two different brands of cables (Delock and AMCC 3ware). How do I identify the cable direction? At least on the AMCC cables the SATA connectors are labeled "BACKPLANE", I guess they should work. It also does not matter wether the fan-out cables are directly connected to drives or to the (expanderless) Chenbro backplane. The controller is connected with miniSAS to miniSAS cables supplied with the expander. While the speed limitation may seem unproblematic for HDDs, it definitely is for SSDs.

The other problem is that staggered spinup does not work with the HP Expanders. I may have to upgrade from my 380w supply. It seems to work "somehow", all drives connected to the expander are delayed wrt. the drives connected to the HBA, but they spin-up all at once.
 
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omniscence said:
The problem is not, that it does not work. The drives just run at 1.5Gbps with two different brands of cables ...
Click to expand...

What firmware version is on the expander? The early fw version only supported sata at 1.5g.

For staggered spinup support on the chenbro backplane, I think you need to set a jumper or dip switch in the chassis.
 
wingfat said:
Thank You for sharing your solution to mounting the HP Expander in a Norco. I have just completed my install with a Norco 4220. I did have to drill custom holes AND remove the large black connectors on the backside. The 4220 has a raised motherboard mounting surface which would not allow perfect mounting with the underside connectors attached. The question I have concerns the power switch. Have you figured out how to use the case on/off switch to control the power?
Click to expand...

I built a HP expander- Norco box just for fun with this functionality. Ended up modifying the PCMIG board instead of the case. I control the drives and the expander through the front power button.
 
omniscence said:
The problem is not, that it does not work. The drives just run at 1.5Gbps with two different brands of cables (Delock and AMCC 3ware).
Click to expand...
The HP Sas expander appears to be quite sensitive on cable's condition, I've had one group of drives running at 3Gbps and the other runnng on 1.5Gbps and the only difference between the sets is that one cable has slightly more tension on it than the other and may be potentially closer to some internalpower cables.

The fanout cables I have don't have the plastic mold around the internal cabling like normal sata do, so they are quite flexible and probably will damage easily.
 
Xon said:
The HP Sas expander appears to be quite sensitive on cable's condition, I've had one group of drives running at 3Gbps and the other runnng on 1.5Gbps and the only difference between the sets is that one cable has slightly more tension on it than the other and may be potentially closer to some internalpower cables.

The fanout cables I have don't have the plastic mold around the internal cabling like normal sata do, so they are quite flexible and probably will damage easily.
Click to expand...

I think the data sheet for the expander says that all of the backplane cables should be of the same length.
 
simplesam said:
What firmware version is on the expander? The early fw version only supported sata at 1.5g.

For staggered spinup support on the chenbro backplane, I think you need to set a jumper or dip switch in the chassis.
Click to expand...

The expander is at firmware 2.02 which should support 3Gbps . The dip switch for staggered spinup is set and it works flawlessly if connected to the HBA directly.
 
Hi guys,

I'm new as a poster, but have read this thread in the past with huge interest. A few week ago my HP SAS Expander finally arrived. It took my supplier in Germany nearly three months to deliver it. Now I am testing, but haven't had any luck, yet, to make it work with my Areca 1680ix-24 with latest firmware 1.48 and transport 4.7.3.0. My first Norco 4020 case is full, so I wanted to extend my drive capacity using the HP Expander in a second Norco case.

The first issue I had was that both my server board (Intel S3210SHLC) and the board in my expansion case (MSI K9A2 Platinum V2 without CPU and memory) that I wanted to use to power the expander do not provide a HIGH signal on the POWER GOOD pin. In fact, I had a lot of strange issues with both boards. Once the expander was inserted, both boards would power up immediately when switching on the power supply, ignoring the ATX power switch of the case completely. My server board even reinitialized its BIOS with the expander inserted. Not good at all.

I had an old Dell Optiplex GX280 board with CPU and memory lying around. So I used this to test the expander, too. And surprise, surprise, the expander would not wreck havoc with it. In fact, everything looks quite OK. The Dell boards boots and the LEDs on the HP expander show working condition: CR1, CR2, CR3 all constant green and CR6 blinking green, as it should be according to Treadstone's posts. And right, this board delivers 3.3 volts on the PWRGD pin of its PCI-E slot.

Finally having found a board to power the expander, I connected it to the Areca controller via an external cable. Unfortunately this is where I am stuck now. With the expander connected to the controller, the Areca will not initialize its firmware. It is stuck there during boot. Actually, this seems to be the same situation Blue Fox ran into. I am afraid he wasn't able to solve the problem. But that was in January. Maybe somebody got an idea about this issue in the meantime.

I can't really say which firmware my expander came with. I assume it is 1.0. It came new from HP with a flyer saying that this is the initial firmware release and 3gb/6gb support will be provided only with a future firmware release. It got the green PCB and was manufactured sometime in 2009.

Maybe the first step should be to find somebody to help my upgrade the expander firmware. Maybe there is a reader of this thread with an HP controller willing to help in either Copenhagen (where I live) or in Berlin (where I am quite often).

Looking forward to hear from you guys,

lutkos
 
See my link at the top of the page for adding a second breakout box and powering the expander independently.

One issue you are having, and it is shown in the first post, is that your card has an onboard expander. Cards with onboard expanders tend to have issues with the HP SAS expander. Odditory's first post has a lot of information.
 
He stated that he used the external port on the Areca which should not be connected to the on-board expander.
 
omniscence said:
I wasn't able to get the expander working with 3.0 Gbps drive-side. Does anyone have it working at that speed with an LSI 1068E or SAS2008 based controller? I'm using fan-out cables to connect the drives. Can this be the reason?
Click to expand...

3.0 Gbps is working for me through the HP SAS expander. I am using the supermicro SAS2008 based controller. It lists the max link speed as 6.0 Gbps but all the drives show a 3 Gbps link in the BIOS utility.
 
If you're having problems with the expander and a 1680ix-24, try obtaining the beta firmware or disable SES2 (which will kill the internal ports) to see if it will work connected to the external one. If it works with SES2 disabled, then I believe the beta firmware should help.
 
houkouonchi said:
3.0 Gbps is working for me through the HP SAS expander. I am using the supermicro SAS2008 based controller. It lists the max link speed as 6.0 Gbps but all the drives show a 3 Gbps link in the BIOS utility.
Click to expand...

Which firmware does your expander use? Does the controller connect with 6Gbps to the expander? I'm still lost at this.
 
Thanks for all your suggestions :) Greatly appreciated. I am a little bit further now. I tested different connections between the 1680ix-24 and the expander:

1. external port to external port: does not work. The 1680 is not initializing the firmware

2. internal port 5 of the Areca (SAS ports 5-8) to internal port 1 of the HP: does not work. Neither the Areca onboard enclosure nor the HP enclosure will show in MacRaid

3. internal port 5 of the Areca to internal ports 8 or 9 of the expander: works somewhat. The HP enclosure shows up in MacRaid, but attached drives are not detected. This way I found out that the HP expander actually came with firmware 2.02 despite the included flyer suggesting differently.

I need SES2 support enabled, because as you stated disabling it would disable the internal ports on the 1680, too. The idea was to expand the already existing disk array in my server case by an additional external one. The optimal solution of course being a working connection between the external ports of controller and expander. But I would settle for an internal connection with SES2 support. I could always apply me Dremel to the Norco cases to cut some holes for an internal cable.

I guess I should contact Areca to ask for a beta firmware in any case.

One additional question. It seems the connection is working on the expander ports marked as "connect to controller" but not on one of the other ports. AFAIK there shouldn't be any distinction between in ports and out ports. Could it be something HP introduced in the latest firmware? Can anybody confirm that the connection works on any of the other expander ports with firmware 2.02? Not that I would care too much which port to use as long as the connection works :D
 
I would see if it works with SES2 disabled anyway just to ensure that the expander is functioning properly first. Everything should work with the beta firmware. I would borrow the 1680ix-24 from the person I sold it to and test it out, but that would be a bit of a pain since my expander is currently in use.
 
I just got the beta firmware 1.48 dated 2010-04-09 from Areca support, which supposedly eliminates the SES2 issues between the ARC1680 and the expander. For good measure I checked the Areca site and found that they have released an even newer version 1.48 beta firmware for their 1680 adapters dated 2010-06-07 just this weekend. I guess I have some testing ahead of me tonight. I'll keep you posted whether any of these firmware releases will make the HP expander work with my ARC1680ix-24.
 
They seem to have released an updated expander firmware as well (since the last official controller firmware release). Never seen anyone update that. Has to be done through the CLI, so it's a bit more of a pain.
 
Blue Fox said:
..., so it's a bit more of a pain.
Click to expand...

Tell me about it. I actually did this a few weeks ago. Wouldn't have been any trouble at all, if not for the onboard serial connector of my Intel server board having a different pin-out than any of my serial port slot adapters. In the end I resoldered one of them to fit the MB. Of course I had to search for the correct pin-out on the web. Trust Intel to omit the only pin-out from their manual that you really need :rolleyes: Since I have a permanent connection from my server board to the CLI now, any further updates are easy to do.

In case you wonder: the standard serial port was (and is) occupied by a state of the art 20 year old serial mouse :D
 
...you didn't use a null modem cable? That's all it takes. Intel didn't do anything backwards and uses the standard pin-outs. Would have saved you a lot of trouble.
 
Blue Fox said:
...you didn't use a null modem cable? That's all it takes. Intel didn't do anything backwards and uses the standard pin-outs. Would have saved you a lot of trouble.
Click to expand...

Well, considering that the Areca controller uses a phone jack instead of a 9-pin serial connector, I had little choice other than to use the serial adapter cable that came with my Areca controller to connect it to a standard serial port. The pin-out of the internal serial header on my Intel board was

2 4 6 8
1 3 5 7 9

whereas all my slot adapters (probably salvaged from old Asus boards) were expecting

6 7 8 9
1 2 3 4 5

The problem wasn't the serial cable as such, but more the fact that I had to connect to the internal serial header, because the external serial port was already occupied. But we are wandering more and more off-topic ;) Let's concentrate on the expander issues.

Last night I updated the Areca 1680 firmware to the latest beta dated June 7. This helped a lot :) Now I have full control over the harddisks connected to the expander, even with SES2 enabled on the Areca. I still need an internal cable connected to one of the ports marked "to controller" on the expander. No other port will work. I have ordered a SFF-8087 to SFF-8088 cable. When that arrives from Hong Kong I can test whether connecting the external port of the Areca to an internal port of the expander will work.

MacRaid tells me that all harddisks connected to the expander are connected at SATA150 with NCQ(32), even if they are capable of SATA300 (Samsung HD203WI). Also booting the server now takes forever. With the official firmware it took the Areca about five seconds to initialize the firmware during boot. With the new beta firmware it takes more than two minutes (and feels like forever and a day...). This has nothing to do with the HP expander. It takes that long regardless whether the expander is connected or not. I might have to talk to Areca about this.

I am not sure why the connection speed is reduced, though. Might be a protocol issue, the cable, probably the fact that I have a couple of old Maxtor drives connected to the expander for testing that are not capable of SATA300. Maybe the expander reduces speed for the other connected disks if it detects slow devices among them. More testing to do, I guess.
 
lutkos said:
I am not sure why the connection speed is reduced, though. Might be a protocol issue, the cable, probably the fact that I have a couple of old Maxtor drives connected to the expander for testing that are not capable of SATA300. Maybe the expander reduces speed for the other connected disks if it detects slow devices among them. More testing to do, I guess.
Click to expand...

It shouldn't matter since every port on the expander is handled individually.

As a test I strapped one of my drives in the SATA150 mode and that was the only one that showed up as SATA150 among the other drives (all of which indicated SATA300). So I am sure that there is something else at play in your setup. It might simply be that the HP SAS expander has issues negotiating the SATA300 mode with your drives!?!

BTW: it's McRAID not MacRAID :)
 
I just setup a new WHS and am experiencing the same issue bellaireroad had a few months back. I currently have the HP SAS Expander connected to a Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 on an ASUS P5BV-M motherboard. On the first boot-up I was prompted to install a driver for the SAS Expander, which I tried going through to get to the 'don't ask me again' step. It seemed that everything was working fine, even though the expander was listed as unrecognized in Device Manager, but when I went to shut-down I got a BSOD.

In looking through the forum it doesn't appear that the issue was resolved before, so I thought I'd post and see if anyone has an idea. I did verify that the motherboard has the latest BIOS and the Supermicro card has the latest drivers I could find (3.1.0.22). Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
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