HP SAS Expander Owner's Thread

I have one of the Chenbro SAS expanders left for sale if you guys desperately want one. Check the FS/FT subforum.
 
myrison said:
The only place I've seen them repeatedly are eBay. There are 2-3 new listings per week for the expanders, they usually go for ~300 or a bit less depending on the exact model.
Click to expand...

The HP's are now priced at $225 shipped. PM me with any questions.
 
Doh, I must have just gotten lucky. I got mine from www.compsource.com, which now is out of stock, heh. I heard the chenbro ones were hard to find, went cheapest store had it in stock and was like "well that was too easy". They have/had the lowprofile Chenbro for $221.

I got the HP expander from Dustin in my system now. One day I'll use this Chenbro in an external case.
 
Other than the power supply difference, do the Chenbros have any other pros over the HP? Upgradeable firmware? Better compatibility with LSI SAS controllers?
 
I know that there are 2 firmware modes selectable on the card itself (via a jumper), so maybe compatibility is better? Main reason I bought them was the ease of powering them in a standalone chassis with no board.
 
Hello,

I have read this thread with great interest. I was wondering if anyone has tried this HP SAS expander card with an LSI SAS3801E controller card or any of the LSI family with the Fusion MPT architecture?

I am specifically interested in this card as I am looking at using the expander with a system running either Solaris 10 or Open Solaris and ZFS.

As you might know the number of controllers supported by these operating systems is quite limited, but I know that the Fusion MPT architecture controllers are fully supported (I have a couple of Sun X4250 machines at work running the 3801E controllers) and this would be a great way of providing a large number of disks to ZFS in JBOD mode allowing ZFS to directly control the disks and the array. I guess one of the main reasons I like ZFS is my personal familiarity with it, but also due to it being software controlled it seems much less sensitive to TLER issues with high capacity desktop drives.

Thanks and best wishes,

Dave
 
Got my HP SAS Expander, but when turn off SES2 in GUI (cant find it in biso) My main raid is gone. Turn it on agan raid is back agan. So long SES2 is on, cant find my test HDD :/


My Raid card is Areca 1680IX-16
 
agrophel said:
Got my HP SAS Expander, but when turn off SES2 in GUI (cant find it in biso) My main raid is gone. Turn it on agan raid is back agan. So long SES2 is on, cant find my test HDD :/


My Raid card is Areca 1680IX-16
Click to expand...

What port do you have the SAS Expander plugged in on the 1680IX? The IX means it has an onboard expander, and these are the internal ports. The external port on your 1680IX does not have the onboard expander. I think this thread talks about issues if you daisy chain the expanders. You can try plugging on the HP SAS Expander to the external port on your 1680IX.
 
IIRC, turning off SES2 effectively disables the Areca's internal expander (which is necessary for the internal ports your main raid is attached to)
 
@videoaddict , I use HP SAS Expander on a LSI1068E chip. There are some quirks with Linux but not expander related, just mptsas driver not being perfect. The Solaris driver is much better, probably due to fact Sun depends on it LSI SAS chips for all its products. If I don't send any of the drive ATA passthrough commands, HP SAS + LSI1068E = perfect setup.
 
agrophel said:
Got my HP SAS Expander, but when turn off SES2 in GUI (cant find it in biso) My main raid is gone. Turn it on agan raid is back agan. So long SES2 is on, cant find my test HDD :/

My Raid card is Areca 1680IX-16
Click to expand...

I could swear I already addressed this in the Areca thread. As mentioned the internal ports on an "ix" model Areca 1680 card requires SES2 enabled for the onboard expander to function, whereas the HP expander only works with SES2 set to "Disabled". Areca is aware of the issue and hopefully will bump the Areca firmware so that the 1680 cards play nice with the HP expander when SES2 is Enabled.

For now I'd suggest forgetting about the internal ports on your 1680ix-16 and just use the HP expander ports, and connect the two cards with an SFF-8088 (external) cable. Sooner or later we'll hopefully see a fix.
 
agrophel said:
Got my HP SAS Expander, but when turn off SES2 in GUI (cant find it in biso) My main raid is gone. Turn it on agan raid is back agan. So long SES2 is on, cant find my test HDD :/


My Raid card is Areca 1680IX-16
Click to expand...

Yes, I had the same problem until Odditory clarified it in the other thread. Don't forget to email Areca...every nudge helps!
 
videoaddict said:
Hello,

I have read this thread with great interest. I was wondering if anyone has tried this HP SAS expander card with an LSI SAS3801E controller card or any of the LSI family with the Fusion MPT architecture?

I am specifically interested in this card as I am looking at using the expander with a system running either Solaris 10 or Open Solaris and ZFS.

Dave
Click to expand...

I'm doing almost exactly the same thing but perhaps am a bit further along:

* AMD quad-core motherboard
* LSI SAS3801E
* HP Sas expander
* Sans Digital tr8x Sas JBOD
* A mix of Seagate (1.5T) and Hitachi (2TB) test drives
* OpenSolaris / ZFS

At the moment I have the SAS3801E cabled directly to the Tr8x...I love how simple the cabling is compared to the usual builds posted here (e.g. simply two SFF-8088 to SFF-8088 cables!)....real clean.

I have the HP Sas expander in a PCI-e slot, but it is NOT cabled up yet as I don't have any SFF-8087 to SFF-8088 cables...can someone recommend a source of good quality cables? I am also planning on ultimately building a SAS2 setup (have SC847-JBOD on order) so I'd prefer to invest now in cabling that will support SAS2 (I presume different cables are required for the two??).

I've got the OpenSolaris install done and it detects the drives just fine...however I have created any ZFS pools yet.

Definitely looking for folks to collaborate on this kind of setup as I'm probably only about an hour ahead of you and have no clue what I'm doing.
 
Hello,

With regards to the issue of cabling from an SFF-8088 device to the SFF-8087 I/F on the HP SAS Expander card, the best supplier I've been able to find so far is a company called Delock using part ref. no. 83063 which is exactly what we're looking for. The bad news is that in the UK this is around £50, but I've not been able to find availability on this product in the USA, bot I will keep looking and report back what I find.

In the meantime if anyone has any other suppliers of this kind of cable I'd like to hear about them. I will keep searching to see if I can find anything cheaper.

Best wishes,

Dave
 
First let me say I've had nothing but good experiences with PCP...bought some of my existing eSATA PMP enclosures there...power supply died on one of them and he sent a replacement immediately...really good service.

That being said, much of their pricing seems to be much higher than others...while I'm willing to pay that for product, not sure it's really warranted for cables.

Regarding using cabling as follows:

SAS Expander (internal)
|
| - standard 8087 to 8087
V
(bulkhead 8087 to 8088 adapter)
|
| - standard 8088 to 8088
V
External SAS enclosure

That would be a lot more expensive then just running a single 8087 to 8088 cable...this is just a temporary setup for me as once I get my SC847 I'll be using a standard 8088/8088 cascade cable.

Thus I'm thinking of something like this:

http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sas_cables_adapters/8887-1M.asp

But can I use that to connect the HP expander to the enclosure, or is that cable only good to connect an HBA to the expander...or does it matter?
 
Hello,

If you're looking for someone to collaborate with on this, count me in. We also have a couple of X4500 'Thumper' boxes at work, one of which I learnt how to handle ZFS on, so anything I can help with then please let me know, though looking around here we seem to have some real ZFS guru's, many of which have more in depth knowledge of the system than me, but I'll chip in and help anyway I can.

Regarding the 8088-8087 cabling, this cable can be used either between the LSi card and the HP Expander, or between the HP expander and the tr8X. As I understand it the external port on the HP SAS expander card can be used either as an input or output port, the SAS expander chip doesn't care, but if you use the external 8087 port on the expander to connect to the tower, then you'll have to find a way of attaching the 8088 from the LSi to an internal port on the SAS expander, or use one of the adapter brackets to convert an 8087 internal port to an external 8088, then use a straight 8088-8088 between the LSi and the bracket, but that seems to make things rather complicated to me. The other, more obvious, option would be to use one of the 8088 ports on the LSi to connect to the tower, then use the other to connect to the HP expander card with an 8088-8087.

Which motherboard are you planning to use on your build? I have a spare core 2 duo chip from a machine I decommissioned here along with some memory (though the Mobo was junk) so all I really need is a good Intel LGA 775 board, I was thinking of going with a Gigabyte board, I'm just not too sure which one yet. I have had a lucky break this weekend as I have managed to pick up an Nvidia Quadra FX1400 based graphics card for under £20, and this is natively supported in both Solaris and Opensolaris, so I do feel I'm getting closer.

Also, how much RAM did you plan on fitting? ZFS loves RAM and tends to chew through it quite voraciously given the chance, but it does make a big difference to performance. As an experiment I tested an X4500 with 8, 16 and 32 GB RAM, the 8 gig machine was much slower with a mix of SMB and NFS traffic then the 16 or 32 GB machine, especially on reads, but as ZFS uses spare system RAM as a cache this would figure. If you're planning on using this machine to store audio and video for your home then this is probably not so much of an issue, but if you're using it for files for business then I'd look at going to 16 GB RAM as soon as you can afford it.

Best wishes,

Dave
 
Is anyone using the Intel AXX6DRV3GEXP or AXX4DRV3GEXP Expander Backplanes?
I'm using the 4-port-version with my 3ware 9690SA-8I and it works perfect.
Also has a drive-activity-led for each slot and you can use the identify-feature in 3DM2 .
You could hook up to 24 drives (or even 48 when using just one SAS-Connector per Backplane) to a single 8-Port-Controller.
And its pretty cheap compared to expander+backplanes.

Only downside is mounting and cooling where some improvisation is needed (size of the 4-port version is smaller than a normal 4to3 backplane).
 
Anyone with a bunch of disks on the HP Expander, can you get over 600MB/sec? I've got two raid arrays on my HP Expander. Each array by itself can get 500MB/sec or more. At the same time, I get ~600MB/sec, I forget if 600MB/sec was a hard limit or not, more or less though it was only ~600MB/sec. I'm wondering if anyone has gotten more than that through the HP Expander.
 
Yes, I get 800mb/s with my HP SAS expander. I know that as good as it gets as it's the limit of the IOP348.
 
Question since im to lazy to troll through this thread to see if its been posted or not...

Does anyone have a pinout on the PCI-E connector on the bottom of this expander? Mine should be here shortly, I am woundering if the pins in use are close enough to the back of the card that i can put it in a 1x slot...
 
You won't be putting it in a PCIe x1 slot unless the end is open. It has a PCIe x8 connector, so you better make sure you have room to accommodate it. However, electrically, it doesn't require anything more than a PCIe x1 slot (if even that).
 
Blue Fox said:
You won't be putting it in a PCIe x1 slot unless the end is open. It has a PCIe x8 connector, so you better make sure you have room to accommodate it. However, electrically, it doesn't require anything more than a PCIe x1 slot (if even that).
Click to expand...

Yeah I plan to open up the end of the slot :) Since the 8x slots are going to have NICs in them.... and my HBA.... so PCI-E slots are kinda at a premium. I just wanted to check the pinout to make sure it doesent use something 1/2 down the card... or something equally retarded.
 
A x1 PCI-E slot will suffice for the electrical connections as the HP expander card only uses power and the PWRGD signal as reset.

However the x8 slot serves as more than just an electrical connection, it provides the card with much needed physical support as all those SFF-8087 cables can exert quite a bit of force on the card and you do NOT want to have to rely on just a x1 slot to provide that kind of support!
 
Yeah, I will have to cook something up to overcome that.... or find a mobo with enough PCI-E slots.... lol
 
This is what I use: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131228
Quad gig LAN means I can put the RAID card in the PCIe x16 slot and the SAS expander in the PCIe x8 slot and that's all I need. NICs aren't Intel, but you can't argue with this:

teaming2.png
 
Blue Fox said:
This is what I use: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131228
Quad gig LAN means I can put the RAID card in the PCIe x16 slot and the SAS expander in the PCIe x8 slot and that's all I need. NICs aren't Intel, but you can't argue with this:

teaming2.png
Click to expand...

Not enough PCI-E Slots :(

I need one with atleast 3... preferably 4-5, only needs to be single CPU as well since its ONLY going to be fileserving.... but i need the slots for more NICs, box is going to need 6-8NICs for sure.

I plan on building 3 nearly identical boxes assuming this Expander works as expectedm and i finish this proof of concept box :)
 
6 to 8 single NIC channel cards or are you looking for a total of 6 to 8 channels?

If you are looking for 8 channels, get two quad channel PCI-E NIC cards...

Why so many NICs anyway?
 
Blue Fox said:
Why not use some normal 8088 and 8087 cables along with an adapter along the lines of this? http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sas_cables_adapters/AD8788-1.asp
Click to expand...

I didn't know there is a such thing exist.

That's a great way to expand the number of external ports. It will work the same as external 8088, right?

I just bought the Areca 1680x and now I feel regret. I should get one with more internal ports instead. Do you think it will work if I get the 1680ix and then use the 8087->8088 adapter to convert one or more of the internal ports to external?
 
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Blue Fox said:
Well, my 1680i should hopefully be here on Wednesday. I can part with my 1680ix-24 then if it works as planned.
Click to expand...

hi blue fox, why part with the 1680ix? Is the ix not as good as the i ? I need a card with two external SAS connectors for my 8-bay enclosure, but I also want to be able to add SAS expanders in the future. Which card in the 1680 series you recommend?
 
Tau said:
Not enough PCI-E Slots :(

I need one with atleast 3... preferably 4-5, only needs to be single CPU as well since its ONLY going to be fileserving.... but i need the slots for more NICs, box is going to need 6-8NICs for sure.

I plan on building 3 nearly identical boxes assuming this Expander works as expectedm and i finish this proof of concept box :)
Click to expand...
Why do you need so many NICs? You might as well get a single 10gbit NIC if you need that much throughput anyway. Not like you could saturate 8 x 1gbit connections with the RAID card anyway considering it only does 800mb/s on continuous reads, and even less on simultaneous requests. I found the 450mb/s my 4 NICs provide to be more than adequate. Also, keep in mind you'll need a rather high end quad core to even handle that much network traffic. My Q6600 was at nearly 100% with all 4 NICs being pegged.

theinv said:
I didn't know there is a such thing exist.

That's a great way to expand the number of external ports. It will work the same as external 8088, right?

I just bought the Areca 1680x and now I feel regret. I should get one with more internal ports instead. Do you think it will work if I get the 1680ix and then use the 8087->8088 adapter to convert one or more of the internal ports to external?
Click to expand...
All the expanders I've come across have external ports as well, so you would not be limited by that card at all. Adapter should work fine, but try not to go crazy with cable length when using SATA drives.

theinv said:
hi blue fox, why part with the 1680ix? Is the ix not as good as the i ? I need a card with two external SAS connectors for my 8-bay enclosure, but I also want to be able to add SAS expanders in the future. Which card in the 1680 series you recommend?
Click to expand...
I had issues with my 1680ix-24 when using the internal expander and an external one. I bought a 1680i because I got a decent price on it, but any of the 8 port cards would have worked for me. I also sold my 1680ix-24 because it was cheaper to buy 2 SAS expanders and an 8 port card than it (and I even got some more money back on top of that).
 
@ Blue Fox - I almost picked one of those up as the Norco RPC-4220 had a special a week or so ago when I bought an extra with that board + 1TB hitachi + Norco RPC-4220 for something like $385 shipped (+ tax where applicable). Trying hard to retire all the LGA-775 stuff so I decided against it and got a eSATA controller with a Silicon Image chip for $10 instead in a combo.
 
theinv said:
I didn't know there is a such thing exist.

That's a great way to expand the number of external ports. It will work the same as external 8088, right?

I just bought the Areca 1680x and now I feel regret. I should get one with more internal ports instead. Do you think it will work if I get the 1680ix and then use the 8087->8088 adapter to convert one or more of the internal ports to external?
Click to expand...

No way, the 1680x is an ideal card especially if you will run multiple chassis. Also it's not ideal to attach the HP expander to an internal port on a 1680 "ix" card since then you're effectively daisy chaining expanders and there may be issues since it's two different expander chips in that sequence. I think I tested this once but results weren't good. I'll try to re-test and confirm.
 
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odditory said:
I disagree. The 1680x is the ideal card especially if you are planning on running multiple chassis. It's not ideal to attach the HP expander to an internal port on a 1680 "ix" card since then you're effectively daisy chaining expanders and there may be issues since it's two different expander chips in sequence. I think I tested this once but results weren't good. I'll try to re-test and confirm.
Click to expand...

My enclosure is 8-bay. If I get 1680x, then I can't use SAS expander in the future since the enclosure already used up all the ports.

Would it be okay if I connect my enclosure directly to the internal ports of 1680ix using 8087 -> 8088 adapter, but reserve the real external port for future SAS expander use? I don't plan to connect expander to internal ports.
 
treadstone said:
6 to 8 single NIC channel cards or are you looking for a total of 6 to 8 channels?

If you are looking for 8 channels, get two quad channel PCI-E NIC cards...

Why so many NICs anyway?
Click to expand...


I was looking at 10GigE the other day... $1K per port is just not cost effective for my home lab right now...

One box is going to have probobly 2-4NICs in it, and act as a file repository for the and large storage, probobly 5-7 clients.

Two other boxes are going to be proof of concept SAN's for home use... super fast drive configs 6-8NICs space will be mounted remotly over ethernet via iSCSI, and probobly use some of it for a scratch disc for video/picture development.

Atleast thats what its starting to look like on paper right now.... how it ends up and works.... still sorting that out ;)

I plan to use multi port NICs, depending how many slots w/e motherboard i find has will determine if i go with dual or quadport Intels... Its just i have dual port cards now... and would be more economical if i could reuse them.

I am curious about your comment on 4 NICs pegging your quad....

I have dual NICs bonded in a test bench and i dont use much CPU at all... (i dont know the actual % but im SURE it was not even close to 25%)

Also on my desktop i peg my GigE connection and i dont ever bump over 10% (with other tasks running as well)
 
Hi all, read through all the thread and finds that there are so many systems and configuartions outhere and all trying to get the HP Expander to work, hope a good luck to all.

I have a glimmer of hope that I will succeed in making mine work, when I eventually order one.

I have just places an order for an HP SC44Ge PCIe SAS and SATA storage controller and which to use this with the HP Expander in the future, my reason for choosing the above controller is that I beleive it's a rebadged LSISAS3442E-R which a couple of members here quoted that it is working ok. I know this is depandent on many factors of which the Mobo.

I am running an Abit AN8 SLI with FreeNAS in ZFS, a graphics card is now occupying one of the SLI slots but I have just purchased a PCI graphics card (Matrox F7011) so that I can free up the SLI slot.

so the question is will these work:
The Matrox PCI graphics card,
The HP SC44Ge PCIe SAS and SATA storage controller,
The HP Expander.

I suppose it will be a miracle if someone has tried this exact configuration but I doubt it, so hoping to draw on your experience, I guess they'll be no telling until the parts are fitted and the system booted and tried.
 
Hey Guys,
I currently have a LSI SATA/SAS 9211-4i 6Gb/s and was looking in to getting the HP Expander, does anyone know if this card will work with my LSI? Thanks.
 
Good news, I've sent an HP SAS Expander card (v2.02) to Taipei for Areca to work with directly, to resolve some of the issues with Areca 1680 cards (SES2), and also test with the upcoming Areca 1880 series SAS-2 cards. They seem enthusiastic since they've been following up frequently with me, so I should have a verdict fairly soon.

I'm going to squeeze them for a firmware update right afterward so we aren't stuck waiting for one of their bigger cumulative updates that are always slow coming.
 
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