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HP SAS Expander Owner's Thread

Bookmage said:
ooo sweet... does that mean the green cards u source will have the latest firmware? to save us lazier folk from having to flash? :-D
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The cards we receive from HP are the green boards, but firmware is unknown. Our techs only update the firmware on a case by case basis when installing them in a configured server for a customer.

I do have P410 and other controllers in stock if needed for a flash upgrade. I know odditory was updating them for folks, and perhaps the best solution is to have someone update them all and disperse as needed?

Check my profile for direct contact info if needed. Thank you guys-
 
pjkenned said:
Going to sound stupid, but that is $50 + shipping + tax in some states. You can get a cheap board for <$50. For example, I bought some mATX MSI AMD chipset board + a Sempron 140E (or something like that it is still in box) for <$50 two weeks ago at Fry's. The CPU sells for $37 on NewEgg so if I were to sell that it would be a super cheap option. The motherboard installs and powers up the PCIe SAS Expander no problem with no CPU and no memory, and the only thing you are using the board for is 11-14w of power to the expander in a board/ slot capable of powering several times that. I'm pretty sure this is going to power 4U #2 in my setup.
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If thats the case, one might be able to salvage a defective/troublesome motherboard... I have some that power up but have bad ram or something... that would be even cheaper...
But I was thinking it would be nice to find a simple backplane to hold the expander. A custom board is a great idea for this niche market. Maybe have 2 pcie 8x slots powered by the 20/24 pin atx port and pins for power. Maybe even add a fan header or two. Make the size something like mini-itx and Im sure we could all pitch in for a small production run...

Just thinking aloud...
 
I am tempted to order this HP expander. Really tempted about it but, PCI-E x4 slot requirement is holding me back. Also controller choise is bit under investigation. I do have one Promise Supertrak EX8650 lying around but I could not find comments whether it would work with this expander?
 
Promise.

We have some of them at work and we call them "Broken Promises" :p

You are better off getting a different controller
 
Yeah Im looking at an Areca 1300-4x for JBOD or the Areca 1212 for RAID5/6...
I wonder if the Dell SAS 5E would work this...

And I wouldnt mind buying flashed expanders from odditory if he wouldnt mind flashing and shipping it forward... :-D
Bundled w/a custom pcie backplane and uve got a deal :-D
 
Bookmage said:
Yeah Im looking at an Areca 1300-4x for JBOD or the Areca 1212 for RAID5/6...
I wonder if the Dell SAS 5E would work this...

And I wouldnt mind buying flashed expanders from odditory if he wouldnt mind flashing and shipping it forward... :-D
Bundled w/a custom pcie backplane and uve got a deal :-D
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Group buy?
 
SynergyDustin said:
Group buy?
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I think it would be a good idea, though it would be best to either bring it up to the mods and check to make sure it's ok before starting one.

A custom board is a great idea for this niche market. Maybe have 2 pcie 8x slots powered by the 20/24 pin atx port and pins for power. Maybe even add a fan header or two. Make the size something like mini-itx and Im sure we could all pitch in for a small production run...
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I'm definitely up for a custom pcb, but IMHO it would be best to make it as small as possible to maximize the amount of pcbs from a single board. It's easy to get stuck in the mindset of "we should include this as well..." Still need to figure out which power pins the SAS expander requires.
 
Neb said:
I think it would be a good idea, though it would be best to either bring it up to the mods and check to make sure it's ok before starting one.
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Agreed. I'll help as best possible, but follow the rules setup before me.
 
Hi.

I am building a new file server and was first planing to use Areca 1680x but i can't get it for lower than ~750&#8364; (~1050$) here in Sweden (import tax and stuff), so i have started to look at the 3ware 9750SA-8I SAS2 that have 2xSFF-8087 connectors wish i can get for about 550&#8364; (~700$).

So shud it work fine to use to use a SAS Internal to External adapter and then a sff-8088 kabel to the HP sas expander?

Like this but duall port

http://www.acmemicro.com/estore/prodimg/cable-167.jpg[/I

And do you think the 3ware 9750 card will work with HP sas expander??

So far i realy like 3ware, my 9650 card have worked flalesly last 2½ year.

PS sorry for my bad English :)
 
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That 3ware card looks awfully similar to LSI's newest offerings (well, because LSI owns them now). I had problems with my LSI 9280-8e working properly with the HP SAS expander, so I have a feeling you might too. Seemed to work slightly better (thought that isn't saying much) with my Chenbro ones, but in the end, I couldn't get it working properly with any expanders, so I returned it. Hopefully you'll have better luck. You don't need to use an adapter to connect the expander externally though. You can connect it internally with the included cables.
 
Well if the 3ware will have the same problems as the new LSI card i will hesitate to buy it.
And the reson way i whan to connect is using the external SFF-8088 port i need all the internal for 32 drives :)

2 bad did just find the 9750 card for 450&#8364; :/

Dunno what card i am gona use now...
 
You might want to consider having someone in the US exporting a card for you. What kind of duties do you have to pay on imports?
 
BTW odditory results from card #2 on that little core i5-650 setup I've been playing with (<70w):

Tested with:
Seagate 15k rpm SAS (2.5/3.5"), Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB and 1TB, Hitachi 2TB and 1TB, WD Green

2.02 Firmware:
Adaptec
3085 - Detects Expander - Will see neither SAS nor SATA drives.
31605 - Does not detect Expander.
5805 - Detects Expander - Will see neither SAS nor SATA drives.

Areca
1680LP (SES2) - Detects Expander - Sees all drives.
 
pjkenned: I have a hunch that Adaptec cards only work with firmware 1.00 as MikeSM has found with his 5085, but I will confirm that theory with a few other cards. If that turns out to be the case I still wouldn't recommend Adaptec cards because there's no guarantee Adaptec will ever fix their firmware. I don't believe this is an issue with the IOP348 itself but rather an issue with Adaptec's implementation, since the 5 series Adaptecs and the 1680 series Areca's both share the exact same IOP348 raid chip.

One theory is the speed autonegotiation- either the Adaptec refuses to link at 6Gbps, or the HP expander refuses to negotiate down to 3Gbps.
 
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Yea I'm pretty sure you are right on the Adaptec ones. That 1045 isn't here but that would get me close to testing every family save the 2 series.
 
Blue Fox said:
You might want to consider having someone in the US exporting a card for you. What kind of duties do you have to pay on imports?
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It is the card pric+shipping *25% tax *3.5% custom :/

Almost have the same problems with the HP SAS expander card, cost 550$ here.

So far 3ware 9750 is the only card below 850$ (cost 619$ exactly) that i have found here in Sweden :(

edit:

The SAS card + the expander is the only 2 missing parts in my new server build, and witch low power HDD to pick sins you can't enable wdtler anymore :/

eSxi 4.0
Lian Li PC-343
6x Supermicro SAS 5-in-3
Intel S3420GPLX motherboard
Intel Xeon X3450 2,66GHz Socket 1156
6x Corsair Server DDR3 PC10600/1333MHz ECC Reg. CL7 4GB
24x 2TB Samsung F3 eco green (not sure about this yet) Raid 60 + 2 hot-spare
4x160gb 2.5" Raid 10 for system
2x500gb Samsung F3 Raid 0 (temp dump disks)

+ Pci-e SAS raid card

And i am gona use my old server as 2nd farm so that i can move the importants server if i need to take down this one.
 
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Well, either one will work for you as they both have external ports. I just think the image is wrong and it is a 1680LP card (as they mention it a few times in the description as well).
 
nitrobass24 said:
Promise.
We have some of them at work and we call them "Broken Promises" :p
You are better off getting a different controller
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Yea, I thought so but lets see. Point is that i'm in process of rebuilding the storage-system - got finally fed up into current still working system (with non-hotswap drives) so pretty much everything is still bit open. Expander would be needed or then i need to think something else like buying 24/16 port controllers. Or 3 x 8port ones.

To make matters bit "worse" from my point of view HP SAS expander one is only available on which could be obtained with relative ease.

Just out of curiosity which series of Promise controllers you were having troubles?
 
Im not sure as I dont deal with that, but the SAN guy is always bitching about it.
 
Well, just got my 1680i, so I get to test things now. I noticed that the box mentions a model that doesn't seem to exist on the website anywhere. ARC-1681...seems to be PCI-X though. They also just released a new model 1680ixl-16. 16 port low profile card.
 
Did find a supplyer here in Sweden that can take in the Areca arc-1680x card for me :)

Can you for ex. put up a 8 disk raid 6 array on the 1680x card and the later youst plug in the sas expander and move the drives on to the sas expander ??
 
I am also interested in a few of these cards but live in canada and would prefer to have the updated firmware. If a group buy happens for a reasonable price id like to grab 4-5 cards.
 
Really looking to pick one of these up, just need to get some funds for buying all the harddrives!
 
Hi there guys. I've got a system being built today and it looks like we'll have time to have our techs flash the updated firmware onto most if not all of the 28 boards we have in stock, and readied for shipment.
 
SynergyDustin said:
Hi there guys. I've got a system being built today and it looks like we'll have time to have our techs flash the updated firmware onto most if not all of the 28 boards we have in stock, and readied for shipment.
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You should be careful given that 1.0 works with adaptecs but not 2.0. I've filed a bug report with them on this and I suggest you do so as well...
 
mikesm said:
You should be careful given that 1.0 works with adaptecs but not 2.0. I've filed a bug report with them on this and I suggest you do so as well...
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These always get updated to HP newest revisions when installed in house. Not sure what other 3rd party cards they work with, but 2.02 will be installed on some cards. PM me for further information
 
mikesm said:
You should be careful given that 1.0 works with adaptecs but not 2.0. I've filed a bug report with them on this and I suggest you do so as well...
Click to expand...

I don't think he should hold back flashing the cards he has to 2.02, meaning hold back SAS/SATA speeds to 3.0Gbps/1.5Gbps, just because Adaptec has to sort out an issue (which they may never). There are more brands of cards that work with a 2.02 rev expander than otherwise. And even if there was something HP could do to work around Adaptec's issue, its not like they ever would except maybe by accident, since they never intended for the expander to be used with non-HP raid cards.

Worst case maybe he can hold back some cards at 1.00 in case further testing finds Adaptecs to only work at that rev, but i'm not even sure that's the case for all Adaptec models. There is in fact no way to downgrade flash to 1.00 once its been upgraded, since HP doesn't make that firmware file available.

For the record I think Dustin being able to offer pre-flashed v2.02 HP expander cards is great, because while for the last few weeks I've grabbed a handful of his 1.00 firmware cards and flashed them to v2.02 to help out some people on the forum non-profit, it got out of hand quickly and began to eat more free time and expense than I had.
 
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odditory said:
I don't think he should hold back flashing the cards he has to 2.02, just because Adaptec has to sort out an issue, which they may never. There are more brands of cards that work with a 2.02 rev expander than otherwise. And even if there was something HP could do to work around Adaptec's issue, its not like they ever would except maybe by accident, since they never intended for the expander to be used with non-HP raid cards.

Worst case maybe he can hold back some cards at 1.00 in case further testing finds Adaptecs to only work at that rev, but i'm not even sure that's the case for all Adaptec models. There is in fact no way to downgrade flash to 1.00 once its been upgraded, since HP doesn't make that firmware file available.

For the record I think Dustin being able to offer pre-flashed v2.02 HP expander cards is great, because while for the last few weeks I've grabbed a handful of his 1.00 firmware cards and flashed them to v2.02 to help out some people on the forum non-profit, it got out of hand quickly and began to eat more free time and expense than I had.
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The rest of our stock should have 1.52 loaded from our experience thus far. Note when you order what version you want.
 
Would this expander be transparent to an operating system such as OpenSolaris when attached to a compatible HBA? Looking for some ZFS action possibly. ;)
 
Go back and read FAQ. Yes it's transparent, it's driverless. All it's doing with the PCIe bus is getting power.
 
I'll confirm it is transparent. It is certainly a great find if you are using lots of disks or are limited to two PCIe slots in a mATX board or something.
 
** Updated OP to reflect Adaptec 5085 and 5805 both able to see drives connected to HP Expander, but only with HP Expander firmware 1.00. Drives are seen by Adaptec card, but connect at 1.5Gbps SATA.
 
Should put an incompatibility list on the first page too. I don't see the LSI 9280 anymore.
 
Refresh me on the 9280 -- it just didn't work at all? what other details can you give?

and how's that 1680i working out?
 
If you for example plugged in the expander and then unplugged it, it would freeze for at least 10 minutes while the crappy software reported what was going on. I'll post more details later when I remember them. The 1680i is working great though. I'll be sending you the money for it shortly.
 
Adaptec 1045: Didn't work.

On the plus side, the new server is happily receiving data.
 
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