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HP SAS Expander Owner's Thread
- Thread starter odditory
- Start date
Hi folks,
Hopefully this is a quick question. I'm about to add an HP SAS expander to my setup. I've a 20 drive chassis and currently only 8 drives are cabled up using 2 x mini-sas from the backplane into the 2 external ports on my PERC6/E
The controller is up and running just fine so my question is what am I likely to need to do once I place it inline?
In Dell/LSI terminology, is exisiting array data likely to show up just as a foreign config?
Can anyone with experience of going this route either with a Dell branded card or a similar LSI model comment?
Thanks
Hopefully this is a quick question. I'm about to add an HP SAS expander to my setup. I've a 20 drive chassis and currently only 8 drives are cabled up using 2 x mini-sas from the backplane into the 2 external ports on my PERC6/E
The controller is up and running just fine so my question is what am I likely to need to do once I place it inline?
In Dell/LSI terminology, is exisiting array data likely to show up just as a foreign config?
Can anyone with experience of going this route either with a Dell branded card or a similar LSI model comment?
Thanks
I did something similar with my data arrays and a 9260 - added the expander and everything worked like before.
No need to re-import the config or anything if you do not boot without any drives connected. (But then the controller would lose the config anyway, in this case scan for foreign config and import this)
No need to re-import the config or anything if you do not boot without any drives connected. (But then the controller would lose the config anyway, in this case scan for foreign config and import this)
Well.... the drives didn't show up and the controller card then said something along the lines of "all drives missing". Am reasonably certain that the cabling was correct (there were only 3 and they're all the same!) Fortunately no permanent damage done.
My next step will be to bring the SAS Expander firmware up to date (just in case...) and as a belt and braces approach, I've picked up 2 IBM M1015's today (about 90GBP each which I think is decent).
The chassis was originally just that, a drive holding box. I've subsequently dropped a P9 X79 motherboard, an i7 3820 and 64GB ram in there and I'd be happy enough to bring all the drive connectivity "inside" and will set it up to be a hyper-v host. Now it's fully kitted out, I'm happy enough to retire my PERC6/e (certainly beats the old Core 2 box that was holding PERC)
My next step will be to bring the SAS Expander firmware up to date (just in case...) and as a belt and braces approach, I've picked up 2 IBM M1015's today (about 90GBP each which I think is decent).
The chassis was originally just that, a drive holding box. I've subsequently dropped a P9 X79 motherboard, an i7 3820 and 64GB ram in there and I'd be happy enough to bring all the drive connectivity "inside" and will set it up to be a hyper-v host. Now it's fully kitted out, I'm happy enough to retire my PERC6/e (certainly beats the old Core 2 box that was holding PERC)
devl-
Just remember you need an HP card to do the firmware upgrade on the HP SAS expander, you can't do it from an M1015.
Ah.... I did not realise there was a dependency on an HP HBA for the firmware upgrade. Guess I won't be doing that then! Don't really want to shell out for an HP card that I wouldn't otherwise use, particularly when f/w revision being the trouble is nothing but guesswork.
If push comes to shove, the two M1015's will be sufficient for 16 out of 20 bays and the motherboard can support the remaining 4 natively for scratch space.
If push comes to shove, the two M1015's will be sufficient for 16 out of 20 bays and the motherboard can support the remaining 4 natively for scratch space.
odditory had offered sometime back to loan an HP card for the cost of shipping (and a refundable paypal surety guarantee) for people needing to update their cards. I don't know if he is still offering that but you might want to PM him to ask.
howamidifferent
n00b
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2011
- Messages
- 40
Whats the max drives with this thing with a HP P410?
Documentation on the web says 24 drives, but post 1 of this thread says its been tested with 32 drives?????
Documentation on the web says 24 drives, but post 1 of this thread says its been tested with 32 drives?????
The docs for the card sayWhats the max drives with this thing with a HP P410?
Documentation on the web says 24 drives, but post 1 of this thread says its been tested with 32 drives?????
24 internal drive bays plus external port for tape
8 Mini SAS 4i ports
2 Mini SAS 4i ports intended for attachment to the Smart Array controller (e.g. P410 or P410i)
3 Gbps SAS bandwidth = 2400 MB/s
6 Gbps SAS bandwidth = 4800 MB/s (available with future firmware upgrade)
6 Mini SAS 4i ports intended for attachment to server drive backplanes
Supports up to 24 drive bays (3 drive backplanes with each holding 8 drive bays)
1 Mini SAS 4x port Intended for attachment to a SAS tape drive, autoloader, or library
3 Gbps SAS bandwidth = 1200 MB/s
6 Gbps SAS bandwidth = 2400 MB/s (available with future firmware upgrade)
I presume the 32 is 24+8 external devices. The docs say tape device but I'm sure I've seen reference elsewhere to an external HBA.
The docs are soft of irrelevant in some points.
As I have stated somewhere in this thread some time ago, the specs for the P410 (and the expander and, in fact, all HP hardware) refer to the products that HP actually sells to its customers.
When they talk about the maximum number of drives supported on a P410 then they are actually referring to the server chassis or drive enclosure you can use the card in or connect it to that HP offers that accomodates the most HDDs. And if that is 24 drives then that's what they will write down in their specs for the card und it isn't necessarily the actual maximum.
HP won't support their hardware in combination with any 3rd party hardware so that's why they don't take into account that there might be a working setup with more than their stated maximum.
The actual maximum could be 10.000 drives but they won't advertise the fact because they can't sell you a solution to actually use that many drives.
As I have stated somewhere in this thread some time ago, the specs for the P410 (and the expander and, in fact, all HP hardware) refer to the products that HP actually sells to its customers.
When they talk about the maximum number of drives supported on a P410 then they are actually referring to the server chassis or drive enclosure you can use the card in or connect it to that HP offers that accomodates the most HDDs. And if that is 24 drives then that's what they will write down in their specs for the card und it isn't necessarily the actual maximum.
HP won't support their hardware in combination with any 3rd party hardware so that's why they don't take into account that there might be a working setup with more than their stated maximum.
The actual maximum could be 10.000 drives but they won't advertise the fact because they can't sell you a solution to actually use that many drives.
devl-
HP specs the expander for 24 drives. It is meant for internal installation in a proliant, where you would dual-link the expander to the controller, and leave one port for tape. That would leave you 6 available ports which will yield you 24 drives. That said, the HP SAS expander is physically capable of more if you choose to single link the controller and utilize all remaining ports for disks.
Thanks. That's useful to know.
I've actually opted to install an IBM M1015 card backed off against the HP Expander. Works a treat (apart from the truly awful WebGUI that IBM ship with the LSI card)
Hasn't been entirely smooth sailing. Box was very choppy to start with - but this turned out to be CPU over temperature. I may have miscalculated but a lot of the LGA2011 CPU coolers seemed massive - too big for a 4U box. I went with a Scythe Big Shuriken 2B cooler as it was the best combination of low profile, low dB and £££ that I could find. Installation of the cooler was a complete pig to be honest, and the wrench Scythe supply to tighten the retaining bolts into the LGA mounting points must be made from chewing gum. There's a 1-2mm tolerance around the CPU bolt which makes it very easy to strip the bolt and hard to get a good contact with the thermal paste on the CPU. The various heat sinks on the Asus P9-X79 pro restrict access even further and my fingers and knuckles look like I picked a fight with a window.
In the end I added a aluminium washer to ensure constant heat transfer and it now seems fine. A couple of holes through the radiator to reach the cross-point heads on the screws wouldn't go amiss either if you're reading Scythe.
Because the CPU was over temperature the whole POST/boot process was very slow and I'd interpreted this as a conflict between the HBA and the various on-board controllers, or with some of the RAM. Right now it's running with 1 x 8GB stick. Next job is to repopulate the remaining 7 x 8GB sticks to bring it up to it's 64GB max.
Live and learn.
Now all I've got to do is figure out the best way to chop this lot up.
As it will eventually be a Hyper-V host on Windows Server 2012, I'm somewhat tempted to set it up using Storage Spaces (apart from a small chunk for the really critical stuff that I'd like hardware mirroring on). I'm a little wary of it, but if MS have released it and are prepared to stand behind it I can probably trust it with what's deemed "non-critical"
Should keep me off the streets for a few days though!
I've actually opted to install an IBM M1015 card backed off against the HP Expander. Works a treat (apart from the truly awful WebGUI that IBM ship with the LSI card)
Hasn't been entirely smooth sailing. Box was very choppy to start with - but this turned out to be CPU over temperature. I may have miscalculated but a lot of the LGA2011 CPU coolers seemed massive - too big for a 4U box. I went with a Scythe Big Shuriken 2B cooler as it was the best combination of low profile, low dB and £££ that I could find. Installation of the cooler was a complete pig to be honest, and the wrench Scythe supply to tighten the retaining bolts into the LGA mounting points must be made from chewing gum. There's a 1-2mm tolerance around the CPU bolt which makes it very easy to strip the bolt and hard to get a good contact with the thermal paste on the CPU. The various heat sinks on the Asus P9-X79 pro restrict access even further and my fingers and knuckles look like I picked a fight with a window.
In the end I added a aluminium washer to ensure constant heat transfer and it now seems fine. A couple of holes through the radiator to reach the cross-point heads on the screws wouldn't go amiss either if you're reading Scythe.
Because the CPU was over temperature the whole POST/boot process was very slow and I'd interpreted this as a conflict between the HBA and the various on-board controllers, or with some of the RAM. Right now it's running with 1 x 8GB stick. Next job is to repopulate the remaining 7 x 8GB sticks to bring it up to it's 64GB max.
Live and learn.
Now all I've got to do is figure out the best way to chop this lot up.
As it will eventually be a Hyper-V host on Windows Server 2012, I'm somewhat tempted to set it up using Storage Spaces (apart from a small chunk for the really critical stuff that I'd like hardware mirroring on). I'm a little wary of it, but if MS have released it and are prepared to stand behind it I can probably trust it with what's deemed "non-critical"
Should keep me off the streets for a few days though!
I have a question. If i ordered a Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 adapter should i return it and just get the AOC-SASLP-MV8 and save 30$ seeing as how i plan on using a HP Sas expander and it will make my sata III disks sata II speeds anyways lol. Is there anything better about the SAS2LP version??? also because it is a non raid HBA and u claim it works with the hp sas expander will windows be able to just see the drives or is there something i am missing??? here is a list of what i will be using if you tell me it is possible.
MOBO: ASROCK extreme3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157280
RAID CARD: Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8
Plugged into first 16x slot on mobo.
HP sas expander. I will be using 5 sas/sata fanout cables off the expander to accomodate 20 SEAGATE BARRICUDA 6G DRIVES wich are being used with drivepool with whs2011.
basicaly i really dont want to waste money and i came across this thread and it made my day. I just ordered the supermicro card and planned on using it for just 8 drives and getting a second one for 8 more then just using my mobo for the other 4. at the end of the day i need windows to have access to 20 drives so i can let drivepool run them in parity mode. thanks. if there is anything i am missing please let me know i am a newb and really am excited to have some fun. oh and if it matters this is for me to store blu rays and stuff like media. Thanks in advance please send any info to
fmydog@gmail.com.
MOBO: ASROCK extreme3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157280
RAID CARD: Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8
Plugged into first 16x slot on mobo.
HP sas expander. I will be using 5 sas/sata fanout cables off the expander to accomodate 20 SEAGATE BARRICUDA 6G DRIVES wich are being used with drivepool with whs2011.
basicaly i really dont want to waste money and i came across this thread and it made my day. I just ordered the supermicro card and planned on using it for just 8 drives and getting a second one for 8 more then just using my mobo for the other 4. at the end of the day i need windows to have access to 20 drives so i can let drivepool run them in parity mode. thanks. if there is anything i am missing please let me know i am a newb and really am excited to have some fun. oh and if it matters this is for me to store blu rays and stuff like media. Thanks in advance please send any info to
fmydog@gmail.com.
ePhoenix1962
n00b
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2012
- Messages
- 1
Hello guys,
I am setting up a new Cybertron server with a LSI SAS 9211-8i that I wish to dual-link to a HP SAS Expander in my new JBOD (Habey ESC-4242C). Is it possible to dual link the LSI to the expander's port #1 and #9 for example, in order to keep #8 to install a bunch of cache SSDs?
Also, is it better to setup this environment as a JBOD or as a real DIY NAS, using FreeNAS for example, installing the 9211-8i directly in the Habey along with a processor and memory?
TIA!
JD
I am setting up a new Cybertron server with a LSI SAS 9211-8i that I wish to dual-link to a HP SAS Expander in my new JBOD (Habey ESC-4242C). Is it possible to dual link the LSI to the expander's port #1 and #9 for example, in order to keep #8 to install a bunch of cache SSDs?
Also, is it better to setup this environment as a JBOD or as a real DIY NAS, using FreeNAS for example, installing the 9211-8i directly in the Habey along with a processor and memory?
TIA!
JD
Hello everyone,
I'm late to this party but want to hang out nonetheless. This thread is an incredible resource and I'm impressed with how on-topic it's stayed...dedication to the technology...gotta love it.
Is anyone using the HP Expander with an LSI-1078-based card? I have an 8888ELP that supports up to 240 drives, so I'd imagine that it works. Here's the LSI page on my card:
http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/MegaRAIDSAS8888ELP.aspx#two
Tech paper on the 1078-based cards; maybe someone smarter than I can see something in here (good or bad)? http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/manuals/0000/860-0489-001/pdf/860-0489-001.pdf
I put in a ticket with LSI and they basically directed me to the "validated hardware list" which can be found here: http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public...Controllers Common Files/MegaRAID_InterOp.pdf Not surprisingly, the HP card isn't listed. But the tech that worked my ticket did add "If it's not on the list it just means LSI hasn't tested it, not that it won't work." I sorta took that as a positive hint.
I'm thinking of going the Norco 4220/PE-2SD1-R10 backplane route or possibly reusing one of my 4U cases and just buying some 5-drive backplanes from Venus/IcyDock/etc.
Thanks.
I'm late to this party but want to hang out nonetheless.
This thread is an incredible resource and I'm impressed with how on-topic it's stayed...dedication to the technology...gotta love it. Is anyone using the HP Expander with an LSI-1078-based card? I have an 8888ELP that supports up to 240 drives, so I'd imagine that it works. Here's the LSI page on my card:
http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/MegaRAIDSAS8888ELP.aspx#two
Tech paper on the 1078-based cards; maybe someone smarter than I can see something in here (good or bad)? http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/manuals/0000/860-0489-001/pdf/860-0489-001.pdf
I put in a ticket with LSI and they basically directed me to the "validated hardware list" which can be found here: http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public...Controllers Common Files/MegaRAID_InterOp.pdf Not surprisingly, the HP card isn't listed. But the tech that worked my ticket did add "If it's not on the list it just means LSI hasn't tested it, not that it won't work." I sorta took that as a positive hint.
I'm thinking of going the Norco 4220/PE-2SD1-R10 backplane route or possibly reusing one of my 4U cases and just buying some 5-drive backplanes from Venus/IcyDock/etc.
Thanks.
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I think that this isn't really meant as a positive hint!
They say...
...that they haven't tested this particular combination.
...that they therefore don't know if it works.
...that it might work because the card supports expanders in general.
...that you should feel free to try it out
They say...
...that they haven't tested this particular combination.
...that they therefore don't know if it works.
...that it might work because the card supports expanders in general.
...that you should feel free to try it out
Well, it would seem that way at first, but those tech support folks are trained to say just that when you bring up ANY combination of hardware/software that the company hasn't extensively tested and validated. It is a good start that my card and the HP card both use LSI chips.
But, after doing some research, I'm probably going to go w/the Intel card. For these reasons:
1. I've read very good things about compatability w/LSI hardware RAID cards
2. Read a thread on servethehome.com where someone had it working right out of the box with a LSI 8708, which is the little brother of the card I have and uses the same chip
3. The retail pack comes w/cables and sells for roughly the same price as the HP card
4. Intel card can be powered off a Molex, so I don't have to mess with a power control board or PCI-E backplane
Nothing's definite yet, but I'm strongly leaning toward the Intel card.
But, after doing some research, I'm probably going to go w/the Intel card. For these reasons:
1. I've read very good things about compatability w/LSI hardware RAID cards
2. Read a thread on servethehome.com where someone had it working right out of the box with a LSI 8708, which is the little brother of the card I have and uses the same chip
3. The retail pack comes w/cables and sells for roughly the same price as the HP card
4. Intel card can be powered off a Molex, so I don't have to mess with a power control board or PCI-E backplane
Nothing's definite yet, but I'm strongly leaning toward the Intel card.
But it doesn't!
The chip on the HP card comes from PMC-Sierra. Chenbro uses LSI chips on their expander cards and so does Intel on their RES2CV series.
But it doesn't!
The chip on the HP card comes from PMC-Sierra. Chenbro uses LSI chips on their expander cards and so does Intel on their RES2CV series.
Also keep in mind that HP sells these expanders as specced only for their Proliant Servers. The fact that they are compatible with a large variety of SAS HBA's aside, if you have compatibility issues with anything other than HP branded server hardware, drives etc they will do nothing for you to assist (and you shouldn't expect them to)
But it doesn't!
The chip on the HP card comes from PMC-Sierra. Chenbro uses LSI chips on their expander cards and so does Intel on their RES2CV series.
/facepalm
You are right, my friend. I temporarily got the HP and Intel cards confused. I actually read this whole thread a few times and was well-aware that the HP card uses a PMC chip...been a long weekend already.
I know HP will offer zero support; I'm pretty capable of figuring things out for myself.
Just thought I'd post to say that the new Hitachi 4TB Deskstar disks work perfect with both the LSI 9260-4i and the HP SAS Expander.
The specific drive model is the Hitachi 7K4000 - 7,200 RPM, 64MB Cache, SATA III, 3 Year Warranty, Rated for 24.7 Usage by Hitachi. Works absolutely flawlessly, detected instantly and after transferring about 5TB of data I had no errors, warnings or other problems in the LSI MegaRAID interface so I'd consider these drives fully compatible.
This is an advanced format drive and Hitachi has not tested this specific drive with expanders nor has LSI tested its compatibility with their cards, both companies have only tested the more expensive enterprise version of this drive so I thought I'd add my 2 cents incase anyone is considering these monstrously large 4TB drives.
The specific drive model is the Hitachi 7K4000 - 7,200 RPM, 64MB Cache, SATA III, 3 Year Warranty, Rated for 24.7 Usage by Hitachi. Works absolutely flawlessly, detected instantly and after transferring about 5TB of data I had no errors, warnings or other problems in the LSI MegaRAID interface so I'd consider these drives fully compatible.
This is an advanced format drive and Hitachi has not tested this specific drive with expanders nor has LSI tested its compatibility with their cards, both companies have only tested the more expensive enterprise version of this drive so I thought I'd add my 2 cents incase anyone is considering these monstrously large 4TB drives.
Thanks for letting us know and congrats on a succesful implementation! That's a lot of storage for just 2 drives (effectively)! The 5 year warranty is really nice. Do you know if these 4TB Hitachi's have any of the TLER nonsense that plagues the WD and Seagate drives?
I don't know if these drives have any kind of TLER problems. But when I investigated TLER I decided it didn't matter wether my disks had it or not.
The reason I came to this conclusion is because if your disk has TLER and it finds an error that it cannot recover from within the allotted time period (say 7 seconds) it hands this error off to the RAID card which will more than likely alert you to a degraded array resulting in you performing a rebuild.
Now if you look at it the other way, if your disk doesn't have TLER and your disk takes longer than your RAID card finds acceptable to recover from an error you are in the same situation, the RAID card is going to say the array is degraded because the disk fell out of the array and it again will want to rebuild.
So either way you're in the same situation. When I looked at it like this I decided it didn't really matter, if a disk is going bad I'm going to want to replace it regardless anyway.
I'll be adding some more disks to this array soon and migrating it to RAID6 I'll keep y'all appraised how that goes.
The reason I came to this conclusion is because if your disk has TLER and it finds an error that it cannot recover from within the allotted time period (say 7 seconds) it hands this error off to the RAID card which will more than likely alert you to a degraded array resulting in you performing a rebuild.
Now if you look at it the other way, if your disk doesn't have TLER and your disk takes longer than your RAID card finds acceptable to recover from an error you are in the same situation, the RAID card is going to say the array is degraded because the disk fell out of the array and it again will want to rebuild.
So either way you're in the same situation. When I looked at it like this I decided it didn't really matter, if a disk is going bad I'm going to want to replace it regardless anyway.
I'll be adding some more disks to this array soon and migrating it to RAID6 I'll keep y'all appraised how that goes.
I'm a little bit confused after going through this thread. I have a X9SCM-F and a M1015 (flashed to IT mode) in my ESXi server. I will add more hard disk drives soon and my option is to buy another (or maybe two) M1015, or go with the HP SAS expander. Would this work and does it make sense to keep one M1015 port for 4 fast SSDs and the other sas port connected to the expander for 24 more data drives?
When choosing between additional controllers and the expander you have to consider some questions.
The first one would be "How many drives do you want to connect in total / to add to your existing setup?".
You said you want to add 24 drives and that is already a problem when using the X9SCM since it only has four PCIe slots. One is already populated with the first M1015 so you have three free slots. Two of them only have a x4 link.
That means that the sencond question to be considered is whether that may affect performance or not. It depends on your workload and is likely to happen when using SSDs but not necessarily when using HDDs.
The third question is regarding price and scaleability. One M1015 is reasonably cheap but two of them together already reach the price of a HP expander. And neither one nor two are sufficient to add 24 drives without an expander so maybe you have to go for a third one.
This means that without an expander you will use all you PCIe slots and that may cause issues on any future upgrades.
One of the main arguments for an expander is that you can build large arrays controlled by one raid controller without spending a huge amount of money on a controller with the right amount of ports. Since you are using the IT firmware on your M1015 you are not doing this anyway but you want to use so many drives in your setup that I would suggest using an expander anyway, saving a bit of money and staying flexible on future upgrades.
The first one would be "How many drives do you want to connect in total / to add to your existing setup?".
You said you want to add 24 drives and that is already a problem when using the X9SCM since it only has four PCIe slots. One is already populated with the first M1015 so you have three free slots. Two of them only have a x4 link.
That means that the sencond question to be considered is whether that may affect performance or not. It depends on your workload and is likely to happen when using SSDs but not necessarily when using HDDs.
The third question is regarding price and scaleability. One M1015 is reasonably cheap but two of them together already reach the price of a HP expander. And neither one nor two are sufficient to add 24 drives without an expander so maybe you have to go for a third one.
This means that without an expander you will use all you PCIe slots and that may cause issues on any future upgrades.
One of the main arguments for an expander is that you can build large arrays controlled by one raid controller without spending a huge amount of money on a controller with the right amount of ports. Since you are using the IT firmware on your M1015 you are not doing this anyway but you want to use so many drives in your setup that I would suggest using an expander anyway, saving a bit of money and staying flexible on future upgrades.
While it is physically/logically supported, I (and others including odditory i believe) have never had anything but flakey results when cascading the expanders. You would be better off single linking a 2 port controller one SFF-8087 to each of 2 expanders instead of cascading controller to expander to expander.
This thread contains some very useful information! After reading it I eventually got one of these expanders off ebay and registered in the forum to give you some feedback:
The expander I got from ebay wasn't recognized by my SAS-RAID-Controller, a Dell H700. I switched PCIe-ports, exchanged cables and even tried it on another mainboard without any luck.
I eventually bought a factory-new HP SAS Expander (with four 70cm SFF8087-SFF8087 cables and running firmware 2.06, as it turned out) from a retailer, which was recognized by the H700. It did however refuse to boot with the expander connected, showing an error message about Direct PD Mapping. I solved this issue by booting with the expander disconnected and disabling the Direct PD Mapping feature of the H700 using megacli (parameter: DirectPdMapping -Dsbl -aAll). Now the system boots fine with the expander connected. It doesn't detect the expander or any drives connected to it during boot, but in the management software everything shows up and can be configured.
So I guess I won't be booting from the H700. But this isn't an issue for me, as I want it to only serve storage arrays anyways. The first expander either contained an incompatible firmware version or - more likely - was flakey/toasted before I even got it...
The Dell H700 works with the HP SAS Expander (after disabling Direct PD Mapping on the controller)! The mainboard is a MSI X58 Pro-E, and no pin-mod is needed for the H700 or the SAS Expander on it.
I have a 24-HD-bay storage case en route and will get a bunch of disks soon. I'm still undecided if I should go for the 3TB WD Reds or wait for availability of the new Toshiba DT01ABA300 drives...
The expander I got from ebay wasn't recognized by my SAS-RAID-Controller, a Dell H700. I switched PCIe-ports, exchanged cables and even tried it on another mainboard without any luck.
I eventually bought a factory-new HP SAS Expander (with four 70cm SFF8087-SFF8087 cables and running firmware 2.06, as it turned out) from a retailer, which was recognized by the H700. It did however refuse to boot with the expander connected, showing an error message about Direct PD Mapping. I solved this issue by booting with the expander disconnected and disabling the Direct PD Mapping feature of the H700 using megacli (parameter: DirectPdMapping -Dsbl -aAll). Now the system boots fine with the expander connected. It doesn't detect the expander or any drives connected to it during boot, but in the management software everything shows up and can be configured.
So I guess I won't be booting from the H700. But this isn't an issue for me, as I want it to only serve storage arrays anyways. The first expander either contained an incompatible firmware version or - more likely - was flakey/toasted before I even got it...
The Dell H700 works with the HP SAS Expander (after disabling Direct PD Mapping on the controller)! The mainboard is a MSI X58 Pro-E, and no pin-mod is needed for the H700 or the SAS Expander on it.
I have a 24-HD-bay storage case en route and will get a bunch of disks soon. I'm still undecided if I should go for the 3TB WD Reds or wait for availability of the new Toshiba DT01ABA300 drives...
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The Hitachi drives where Power Up In Standby (PUIS) is set to on, connected to a sata_sil adapter card are detected without any problem in Debian Linux kernel 2.6.32-5-amd64.
This thread mentions PUIS in 3 earlier posting in relation to the HP SAS expander card. Although those were talking about PUIS via the SAS adapter BIOS.
Over here the mpt2sas drivers version 2 and 15 will not detect any of the 64 attached drives, generating message port enable: FAILED with timeout (timeout=300s).
Does anyone yet have success:
1. (using LSI2008)
2. with adapter BIOS disabled
3. in Linux
4. (with Hitachi drives)
5. where PUIS was set on the drive, for example using "/sbin/hdparm -s1 --yes-i-know-what-i-am-doing /dev/sdX"
to detect / wake the drives behind the HP SAS expander card after the next (cold) boot?
This thread mentions PUIS in 3 earlier posting in relation to the HP SAS expander card. Although those were talking about PUIS via the SAS adapter BIOS.
Over here the mpt2sas drivers version 2 and 15 will not detect any of the 64 attached drives, generating message port enable: FAILED with timeout (timeout=300s).
Does anyone yet have success:
1. (using LSI2008)
2. with adapter BIOS disabled
3. in Linux
4. (with Hitachi drives)
5. where PUIS was set on the drive, for example using "/sbin/hdparm -s1 --yes-i-know-what-i-am-doing /dev/sdX"
to detect / wake the drives behind the HP SAS expander card after the next (cold) boot?
RocketBits
n00b
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2012
- Messages
- 11
Hello,
I have an Areca 1882-ix with Firmware 1.51 connected to an HP SAS Expander on a GIGABYTE board running win7 pro. I also have 24 Hitachi 2TB 7K300 Hard Drives. The problem is I can not get this setup to work. I want to have a RAID 60 with multiple volumes running to provide storage for all of my content as well as Hyper-V machines on my Dell PowerEdge R710 which it is connected to with Server 2012 Datacenter (This is provided as it is what the card is directly connected to. I have tried it with the card installed in an Apple Xserve with the same results). What happens is that when I power on the PowerEdge (with Areca 1882-ix) I can not find the card in the ArcHTTP interface. There is no "+" sign next to "SAS RAID". But when the RAID array is not connected via the SAS-8088 cable in the Areca card, the card shows up just fine and I have it configured:
drive power managemnt disabled
SMART queries on demand
PCI Gen3 disabled.
So on the SAS Expander one of the lights is steadily blinking.
When I turn on the array HP SAS EXP 2.06 shows up but only a small number of drives who up with some as "Free" and other "Failed". I know all the drives work, as once they all came on and the card beeped half through initiation and the card was no longer visible in ArcHTTP. Is the SAS Expander bad? Anything I can do? I would like to have a working array by christmas.
I have an Areca 1882-ix with Firmware 1.51 connected to an HP SAS Expander on a GIGABYTE board running win7 pro. I also have 24 Hitachi 2TB 7K300 Hard Drives. The problem is I can not get this setup to work. I want to have a RAID 60 with multiple volumes running to provide storage for all of my content as well as Hyper-V machines on my Dell PowerEdge R710 which it is connected to with Server 2012 Datacenter (This is provided as it is what the card is directly connected to. I have tried it with the card installed in an Apple Xserve with the same results). What happens is that when I power on the PowerEdge (with Areca 1882-ix) I can not find the card in the ArcHTTP interface. There is no "+" sign next to "SAS RAID". But when the RAID array is not connected via the SAS-8088 cable in the Areca card, the card shows up just fine and I have it configured:
drive power managemnt disabled
SMART queries on demand
PCI Gen3 disabled.
So on the SAS Expander one of the lights is steadily blinking.
When I turn on the array HP SAS EXP 2.06 shows up but only a small number of drives who up with some as "Free" and other "Failed". I know all the drives work, as once they all came on and the card beeped half through initiation and the card was no longer visible in ArcHTTP. Is the SAS Expander bad? Anything I can do? I would like to have a working array by christmas.
Are you connecting the Areca to the expander with a SFF-8088/SFF-8088 cable, or did you reroute a SFF-8087 off the card? If the latter, try the former. People have reported problems daisy chaining another expander off the internal one that the ix models use. I don't have any -ix cards, only LP cards, so I can't help beyond that.
RocketBits
n00b
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2012
- Messages
- 11
I am using SFF-8088 - is it because of out of date firmware on the SAS Expander?