HP SAS Expander Owner's Thread

Kettchxxii - I remember you posted that info in a thread of mine a few weeks ago. However, as you can see from my reply above yours in this thread, I can't get the drives on the expander to show even w/o any sata drives attached to the AOC-SASLP-MV8.

Also, in your AOC-SASLP-MV8 bios, did you have to change any settings? Did both directly connected sata drives and expander drives ever show up together in your bios? I'm just trying to figure out if it's an AOC-SASLP-MV8 issue, expander issue, or WHS issue =/
 
I can say that I was having some trouble with random drives (0-3) drives not showing in windows, and that disabling int13 solved that problem. I decided to flip that bit when I read adidas' post this morning and everything is working now.

I am using the X8SIL-F motherboard with the saslp and the expander. This is also a Win2k8 R2 with Hyper-V'd WHS. I have the Marvell 64xx/63xx SAS Controller in the device manager of the host with no mention of the expander. I remember something about how you maybe able to set the expander to be silent or invisible in its setup and let the saslp take care of it. I wish you luck. It was hell for me until I found the magic bullet, if this is indeed the magic bullet. cant test much now, its block party time...
 
I bought a AOC-SASLP-MV8 and replaced the ARC-1680i in my system for some tests. During booting, the motherboard BIOS showed the 3 SATA drives connected to the motherboard (1 Intel SSD G2 drive and 2 WD20EADS drives). Once the AOC-SASLP-MV8 BIOS finished, it showed 8 more drives (out of the 48 WD20EADS drives in my storage pool) that were connected via two HP SAS expanders (one expander per AOC-SASLP-MV8 connector). Once Windows Server 2008 R2 booted and after installing the AOC-SASLP-MV8 driver, all 48 drives from the storage pool plus the 3 SATA drives from the motherboard were all visible.

So in my case, I had no issues with the SATA drives from the motherboard and the SATA drives via the AOC-SASLP-MV8/HP SAS expander combo. Since the tests, I actually put the ARC-1680i back into my system just as a JBOD controller...
 
Hello, do any of you guys get the Port 3 error? My SASLP-MV8 does not see any drives, takes ages to boot, and prints many port 3 errors. If I press any key, boot continues and i see all my drives under linux and everything works ok(It is just a PITA for a headless server). Disks are connected to ports 2-7 and the controller is connected to port 8 or 9.
 
I haven't seen any port 3 errors on my system. Have you tried to switch the cable that goes to port 3 with another port to see if the problem stays on port 3 (faulty HP SAS expander port 3) or moves to whatever port you switched it with (bad cable, backplane or drives)?

Have you tried to disconnect and reconnect the cable in port 3? Maybe it's a contact issue?!?

I have some timeout issues with the HP SAS expander during initial boot-up (first time I power up the server). The ARC-1680i boot log shows an error message for every drive that doesn't get scanned or initialized properly during this initial boot-up. The error code logged per drive shows up as 'Enclosure #7 timeout' ! Really odd. That's why I bought the AOC-SASLP-MV8 so that I could figure out if this was an issue with the ARC-1680i controller, the HP SAS expander cards, backplanes or drives. When I had the AOC-SASLP-MV8 in my system, the server booted up without a hitch every single time. So it looks like Areca still has some issues between the HP SAS expander and the ARC-1680i. I do have the latest (beta) firmware files installed on the ARC-1680i. The odd thing is that when the ARC-1680i first starts scanning for drives and it gets to those drives that are 'hung' (the activity LEDs turn on slowly in sequence and are usually the last drives on either the first or second HP SAS expander), if I simply press CTRL-ALT-DEL during this time, the server re-boots and the scan goes through without any issues. It's only the first time from a cold-boot that this happens... Need to talk to Areca about this ... again!
 
Don't want to jinx it here but I think your suggestion did it Kettchxxii. I disabled "int13" and all 4 sata drives on port 1 of the AOC-SASLP-MV8 and the 2 sata drives on the expander all showed up. Added the 2 new drives to my pool via the home server console and the pool sized increased and now I'll just let WHS do it's thing and relocate files off some of the 95%+ used capacity drives (or I'm assuming it'll do that).

Anyway I can force some files onto those 2 new drives to make sure I can write to them properly?

edit: Treadstone - What's the harm in bypassing the 11th pin with nail polish or scotch tape? I was debating buying a backplane with an atx power adapter and picex16 slot to replace the asus mobo but I'm curious what harm I'm doing with the mod right now. Thanks!
 
Hi all,

Has anyone had an issue with the HP SAS expander where it seems to lock up or reset? I'm finding that all IO is halting and my console is being flooded with SCSI sense code errors and have observed that the drives then seem to go through a detection/power up cycle. After about a minute or two it all comes good, but it is causing havoc on my ZFS array and I'm seeing loads of checksum errors as a result, meaning I need to run a scrub maybe once a week or two.

Currently running firmware N-1 and will update when I can as I noticed that the latest may fix this issue:
Code: 
Fixed an issue where certain SATA hard drives would fail after an HP SAS Expander Card reset.

If it's not a firmware bug I'm worried it might be because of heat, the expander gets VERY hot and I've replaced all the fans in my Norco 4220 with quiet 80mm's.

I have the expander hooked up to an Intel rebadged LSI 3082E-R (works fine with Intel or LSI firmware, before this I tried a revision 1 LSI 3442E-R and Adaptec 2045 neither of which worked). Both ports on the LSI are hooked up to the controller ports on the expander, but I'm seeing throughput get limited to about 300MB/s for whatever reason (haven't looked into this yet) with 12x 2TB Samsung F3EG, 4x 640GB WD Blues and 2x 160GB WD Blues.
 
jazzman161 said:
Added the 2 new drives to my pool via the home server console and the pool sized increased and now I'll just let WHS do it's thing and relocate files off some of the 95%+ used capacity drives (or I'm assuming it'll do that).
Click to expand...

No, WHS won't do that. You'll have to use a program like Drive Balancer to move the data from the full drives to the new drives.

Anyway I can force some files onto those 2 new drives to make sure I can write to them properly?
Click to expand...
Copy some files from another computer to the WHS. The new files should land on the new empty drives.
 
@jazzman161: What you are doing with the nail polish is disconnecting the motherboards power good signal (equivalent to a reset signal) from the reset line of the SAS expanders build in processor. Since there is no circuitry to define the signal on the SAS expander (unless the processor has an internal pull up resistor), that means you are leaving the signal floating (undefined state). Environmental changes could influence this signal to a high or low level at any given time that the reset input circuitry of the processor could interpret as an unstable power or reset condition and trigger a reset of the processor!
That's why you always want to have signals defined (or in other words, you don't want them floating), which in this case would require a pull-up resistor to +3.3V.

@quillo: Could you please let us know a bit more about your system? How are you powering the HP SAS expander, drives and system. What's the power supply output and how many drives are you powering with it.
Heat can certainly cause the symptom you are describing, another cause for this issue could be what I explained above.
I don't think you would see any higher throughput when using two links between the controller and the expander unless the firmware/driver of the controller supports dual linking.
 
treadstone said:
How are you powering the HP SAS expander, drives and system. What's the power supply output and how many drives are you powering with it.
Click to expand...

The SAS expander is plugged into a PCIe x8 port on the motherboard (Intel S5500BC) and the power supply is a Seasonic X750, powering 20 drives in total. I don't think the PSU is the issue as it handles startup fine when it should be under the most load, and I intentionally went for a higher rated PSU because staggered startup doesn't seem to work with this controller/expander combo.

The expander itself connects to the drives via a Norco backplane using 5x 8087 cables

Heat can certainly cause the symptom you are describing, another cause for this issue could be what I explained above.
Click to expand...

I'm planning on buying a 4224 so that I can fit some more drives, but the 120mm fans should also help. I did actually have these issues before when using the standard delta fans but even then the expander got way too hot.

Here is what I'm seeing in messages log when the problem occurs:
http://pastebin.com/1Q1uDTjZ

I suppose it's entirely possible that the controller is also to blame but I'm much more suspicious of the expander.

Thanks for your help :)
 
That's a LOT of errors in a short period of time!
What I was explaining to jazzman161 in my previous post was in regards to the power good signal for the HP SAS expander which is used as a reset line by the SAS expanders processor. If a signal like the power good signal on the SAS expander is not properly terminated (e.g. pulled to +3.3V), random resets can occur. From the looks of it, you don't have this problem with your setup since the Intel S5500BC is powering your SAS expander. The HP SAS expanders do get quite HOT and require a decent amount of air flow across the heatsink. If you have another card in the slot right next to it, or if the expander is mounted in the last slot and sits right next to the chassis, there may not be enough air flow to keep the controllers temperature low enough for it to work reliably! You may need to add a small fan right on top of the expander to move more air over the heatsink!
 
So, anyone have any thoughts as to why I can't daisy-chain these expanders? If one of the expanders isn't directly plugged into the HBA, it doesn't show up (though the expander it is plugged into does).
 
Blue Fox said:
So, anyone have any thoughts as to why I can't daisy-chain these expanders? If one of the expanders isn't directly plugged into the HBA, it doesn't show up (though the expander it is plugged into does).
Click to expand...

Which controller and expander fw rev? Mine worked (just tried).
 
pjkenned said:
Which controller and expander fw rev? Mine worked (just tried).
Click to expand...
Areca 1680i for the controller. The firmware on both SAS expanders should be 2.02. No problems if they're both directly connected to the controller (using either the internal or external ports).
 
treadstone said:
You may need to add a small fan right on top of the expander to move more air over the heatsink!
Click to expand...

I might give this a try with a slot cooler... I've done some more researching today and found that I'm not the only person having this issue and that others seem to think it is the controller itself. I bumped up the device timeouts in the controller BIOS but considering the issue is becoming more and more frequent I reckon you're on the money with the heat theory!
 
cavediver said:
No, WHS won't do that. You'll have to use a program like Drive Balancer to move the data from the full drives to the new drives.


Copy some files from another computer to the WHS. The new files should land on the new empty drives.
Click to expand...

Thanks cavediver. Copied some new movies over and they landed on the new drive and duplicated to the other drive. Not sure I'll run Drive Balancer ask I have 10+TB off data and some searching showed some people having to let DB run for days before it sorted it all. Not sure I want my server outta commission for that long.

Thanks treadstone for the clarification on the floating signal. I think I'll order that backplane board so I don't have random resets on those drives.

Ran HDTune last nite on the two new drives n the SAS expander and they actually run a tad bit faster than two drives on the SALSP controller. (All 4 are WD20EARS). So I guess I should be good there.

Thanks again all!
 
Hey guys, sorry for the absence. Getting caught up now and will help where I can, as well as update the OP. Good to see the thread still going strong.
 
treadstone said:
That's a LOT of errors in a short period of time!
What I was explaining to jazzman161 in my previous post was in regards to the power good signal for the HP SAS expander which is used as a reset line by the SAS expanders processor. If a signal like the power good signal on the SAS expander is not properly terminated (e.g. pulled to +3.3V), random resets can occur. From the looks of it, you don't have this problem with your setup since the Intel S5500BC is powering your SAS expander. The HP SAS expanders do get quite HOT and require a decent amount of air flow across the heatsink. If you have another card in the slot right next to it, or if the expander is mounted in the last slot and sits right next to the chassis, there may not be enough air flow to keep the controllers temperature low enough for it to work reliably! You may need to add a small fan right on top of the expander to move more air over the heatsink!
Click to expand...

Hi Treadstone,

Thanks for all your great posts around here, they have been highly informative during my WHS upgrade planning. Just out of curiosity did you add a small fan on top of your HP SAS expander? I have a fan for it that I purchased prior to recieving the card but I can't think of an elegant way to mount it (this is the fan: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835119049)

I could zip tie it in some way but that seemed pretty inelegant. Are there any decent slot coolers you/anyone else could reccomend for this? I am sure I have an empty PCI slot I could throw something into next to the SAS expander.
 
@pirivan:

Thanks for the kind words :)

I don't have a dedicated fan on either of the two HP SAS expanders in my server. The fans that came with the server chassis move a LOT of air (for pictures, see my server build log). Also, my 'server room' is kept at 18 to 19 degC all the time which helps to keep everything pretty cool :)

Personally, if I would add a small fan on top of the heatsink, I would machine four small aluminum blocks with threads for screws to mount the fan and press-fit the blocks between the heatsink fins.
If possible, keep a little bit of space between the fan and the heatsink. This will increase the life expectancy of the fan greatly. Fans tend not to like heat much!
 
treadstone said:
@pirivan:

Thanks for the kind words :)

I don't have a dedicated fan on either of the two HP SAS expanders in my server. The fans that came with the server chassis move a LOT of air (for pictures, see my server build log). Also, my 'server room' is kept at 18 to 19 degC all the time which helps to keep everything pretty cool :)

Personally, if I would add a small fan on top of the heatsink, I would machine four small aluminum blocks with threads for screws to mount the fan and press-fit the blocks between the heatsink fins.
If possible, keep a little bit of space between the fan and the heatsink. This will increase the life expectancy of the fan greatly. Fans tend not to like heat much!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the fast reply! Oh trust me, I've seen your build log! I read the entire thing before I started work on my much, much smaller upgrade plan (I wish I had the cash to build something like that). In fact, I was so impressed (read, jealous) with it, I've showed it to a number of other IT nerds/co-workers. They were all quite astounded and wondered how much that must have cost. I told them when you put it in the perspective of "If we specced out a SAN here at work with 100TB of storage space from EMC, Dell, HP etc how much would THAT cost? Comparatively what he spent on it was probably peanuts." Anyhow, I'm getting off on a tangent.

Thanks for the suggestion, I may see what I can do with something similiar that I can buy as I can't see myself machining anything given that I have A) No real tools B) No carpentry/mechanical/engineering ability of any kind. Either way it gives me a decent direction to go in if I want to put a fan on it. But, if that turns out to be too hard, I'm only out a few bucks and I can always find a slot cooler for it :).
 
I've been lucky to help quite a few folks out here with the expanders. If anyone is still searching for them, I have them in stock w the oem cables.

-Dustin
 
Have anyone tested a Areca arc-1880 with this expander?
Just bought a expander and is now looking for a raidcontroller that is compatible with it

The ones I have in mind are Areca 1680 and 1880 but if there are cheaper cards that could be used with the expander I would love to here about them

The only criteria I have is that it supports Raid 6 and around 32 disks
 
Hello all.

I am building a new system with a Norco 4224 and Areca 1680-ix (8).
I was hoping to use this HP card but I have heard that it has problems with the 1680-IX line of areca cards. There was some discussion of a new firmware release from Areca that either works around or fixes the problem.

Does anybody know if this is proven to work? The new firmware was (to my understanding) supposed to disable some functionality which may cause problems? Is there a new 'final' areca firmware for this 1680 card that correctly resolves the interoperability issues with the HP SAS expander?

Thanks in advance for any advice
 
Only thing i can tell you with an IX card is to try it. it works for some and not for others, does not seem to be consistent.
 
mrwilby said:
Hello all.

I am building a new system with a Norco 4224 and Areca 1680-ix (8).
I was hoping to use this HP card but I have heard that it has problems with the 1680-IX line of areca cards. There was some discussion of a new firmware release from Areca that either works around or fixes the problem.

Does anybody know if this is proven to work? The new firmware was (to my understanding) supposed to disable some functionality which may cause problems? Is there a new 'final' areca firmware for this 1680 card that correctly resolves the interoperability issues with the HP SAS expander?

Thanks in advance for any advice
Click to expand...

I have been messing around with the same card combo for some time now and have been unable to get the Areca to work with it. I have a Norco 4220 with a Supermicro X8SIL-F.

I have tried using internal and external ports from the HP Expander to the Areca, various 1680 firmware revisions including the newest beta build, SES2 enabled and disabled, and still nada. I haven't tried updating my HP firmware from 2.02, but I don't really have the means to perform an upgrade (no HP Smart Array Controller).
 
Thanks nor, doesn't sound too good :(
It seems people reported some success with 1.52 (?) firmware on the HP card. I wonder if the newer firmware is causing problems?
 
Aren't there any other good cards then Areca 1680/1880 that support raid 6 to use with the expander?

Been looking like crazy but don't find any other good sources about this except this forum
 
How do you connect this to another RAID Card that does not have an external connector?
 
treadstone said:
I'm not familiar with the Perc5 cards.
A single SFF8087 cable caries 4 SAS (SATA) channels.
Click to expand...

the Perc 5 uses a large internal Serial Attached SCSI x4 (SFF-8484) cable. People buy a internal Serial Attached SCSI x4 (SFF-8484) to x4 SATA cable that gives you 4 seperate SATA/SAS connectors.
 
According to the release notes of the latest firmware, it fixes an issue when more than 50 sata drives are connected to the controller, so that leads me to believe it does :)
http://ftp.us.dell.com/SAS-RAID/R189337.txt

EDIT: Tech docs http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/RAID/PERC5/en/UG/HTML/chapterb.htm

Doing a little looking back in my mind and IIRC someone tried with the HP expander and it wouldnt boot. But that was several months ago.
Also you could always to the LSI firmware. Its probably more flexible.
 
A PERC 6/I (newer version of the PERC 5/I, which supports Raid - 6) does not support enclosures at least by my testing.


With a PERC 6/E (external, versus internal) all of the drives attached to the HP expander have the same port, enclosure, backplane address.
Does anyone know if a newer firmware (than 1.00) will fix the problem? I'm using an external cable to the external port on the SAS expander. Any other way to fix this?
Thanks!
 
pirivan said:
I could zip tie it in some way but that seemed pretty inelegant. Are there any decent slot coolers you/anyone else could reccomend for this? I am sure I have an empty PCI slot I could throw something into next to the SAS expander.
Click to expand...

I recommend something like a 40x40x10mm fan mounted directly to the heatsink of the HP SAS Expander. Forget a slot cooler, thats just throwing air in the heatsink's direction. A fan mounted directly forces the air out and away from the fins. While the chip is designed to run at high temps, keep in mind the heatsink was designed with high airflow HP server cases in mind, so running this expander card in a home media server requires some extra attention.

The difference in temp between having a 40x40x10mm fan on the heatsink versus without is too-hot-to-touch versus warm to the touch. I certainly feel a lot better with the fan on all my HP expanders (currently 5). The fan itself is only a few dollars (Evercool, etc) and often they don't come with screws, or screws long enough, so I've used the screws from old VHS tapes and driven them straight into the heatsink between the fins.
 
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It seems HP updated the firmware for the HP SAS Expander back in May. I hadn't checked their site in a while since v2.02 has been so trouble free, but the latest version is 2.06. I'm going to update one of my cards and then test to see if there are any worthwhile changes (or likewise it breaks anything). Here are the official changes as noted by HP at http://bit.ly/a3FLf6

Problems Fixed:

Fixed an issue where HP 6G SAS hard drives would fail to spin up when configured as spare hard drives.
Fixed an issue where certain SATA hard drives would fail after an HP SAS Expander Card reset.
 
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couple/three questions before I order:
1. currently have a HP 4320 card, wondering if anyone can confirm full operation?
2. if the HP expander is 6Gbps capable, what happens if you hook a 6G drive and the Host card (my HP 4320) isn't 6G?
3. I shouldn't have to rebuild the array or do anything but disconnect the array, hook up the expander, plug back in, and rescan in HP RAID BIOS right?
 
I seem to be having the same problem a few others are having/had with regard to connecting a Super Micro AOC-SASLPMV8 with the HP expander in WHS.

1) with no connection between cards - no message to install drivers - NO BSOD on shutdown - HP SAS device in Device Manager with yellow ?

2) with cards connected without hard drives - message to install drivers for "HP HP SAS EXPANDER SCSI ENCLOSURE DEVICE" - no BSOD on shutdown - HP SAS device in Device Manager with yellow ?

3) with cards connected, with HDD- message to install drivers for "HP HP SAS EXPANDER SCSI ENCLOSURE DEVICE" - BSOD on shutdown - HP SAS device in Device Manager with yellow ? . Drives show up in device manager, and can be added to pool.

The BSOD gives me the good ole IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

I have tried all the suggested "silver bullets" I have seen on here including: flashing the SM X8SIL-F mb to the latest bios, installing the latest drivers for the AOC-SASLP-MV8, disabled (and tried enabled) the INT13 in the SM controller settings, moved countless cables, enable/disable the PnP setting in MB bios, and trying each stick of RAM individually. If ANYONE has any insight on how to get this fixed (or other things to try) it would be GREATLY appreciated!!

EDIT: System - SM X8SIL-F, Kingston 128gb SSD to mb SATA, i3-530, 4gb SM approved RAM, HP Expander, SM AOC-SASLPMV8, up to 8 - 2TB Hitatchi HD (I have tried all different combinations), Norco 4220
 
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