HP SAS Expander Owner's Thread

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I will ask my contacts at HP about the blue PCB. Maybe there has been a refresh or something.
 
@noddy: I think the blue version was manufactured around 2008 and the dark green card you referenced was manufactured in 2009.
 
Hi,

I've received my HP SAS Expander (green) a few days ago. I had it connected to my Intel SASUC8i/LSI 3081E-R (flashed w/ IT Firmware).

First, I had 2x SFF-8087 connected between the HBA and the SAS Expander, but for my surprise, a few drives didn't show up in the LSI setup. So I removed one cable - that works fine, but I only get 1.5G for all my 3G drives.

Is this because I just can use one Multilane cable? THX in advance!

PS. Here's a screenshot of the LSI setup (via IPMI)
YYTRRDIN
 
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There is no screenshot, at least none I could actually see.

Do you have your expander flashed to the latest firmware?
 
Just bought a IBM M1015(130€), M1000 (Raid5+Encryption key 85€) and a HP SAS Expander (for 200€!!!!)

Will notify thread author about compatibility of the upgraded IBM M1015 with the Raid 5 Key.
 
@DieTa: I can only suggest to update the firmware on the expander first at this point. Don't have enough SASUC8i knowledge. Sata 1.5G links aren't the end of the world though, that shouldn't affect performance in any way.

@Enlightend: I think there is nothing to notify about. The M1015 works with the expander (where did you get it for 200€ by the way?) and the Raid 5 expansion probably won't affect compatibility at all.

@noddy (and everyone who cares): My HP techies told me that the different colors of the PCB come from different revisions at their suppliers. It won't affect technical details on the expander and the green and blue card should be identical.
 
@JensS Yeah it worked fine until this morning when I moved the server into a bigger case - when first booting, the LSI 3081E-R (Intel SASUC8i) didn't appeared on booting nor in the BIOS. Looks like the LSI card is broken (no idea why - worked fine since yesterday). Even putting it into another PC didn't show it's setup - the LED is on, but no access is possible. Linux does not list it anymore on "lspci" - so I guess it's dead. Too bad I've flashed it and there's no way back to the Intel FW - so my warranty (here in Germany) seems to be lost :/

Which throws me back with the complete project :( Had all stuff here to make it work awesome, until this piece broke down.. damn...
 
Well, the laws aren't exactly clear in this case and I am not sure about the legal terms in English, but I think that flashing the firmware shouldn't affect the warranty (German: Gewaehrleistung). It might affect Intels guarantee (German: Herstellergarantie) since that follows solely Intels conditions. whereas warranty is given by law.
Where did you buy it? There are some shops around which are very accomodating and if the card is completely dead they probably can't find out that it doesn't have the original firmware on it. Even if they could they probably won't because of the required effort.
And with a high possibility it isn't dead because of the flash so you could try to RMA it with good conscience.
 
JensS said:
Well, the laws aren't exactly clear in this case and I am not sure about the legal terms in English, but I think that flashing the firmware shouldn't affect the warranty (German: Gewaehrleistung). It might affect Intels guarantee (German: Herstellergarantie) since that follows solely Intels conditions. whereas warranty is given by law.
Where did you buy it? There are some shops around which are very accomodating and if the card is completely dead they probably can't find out that it doesn't have the original firmware on it. Even if they could they probably won't because of the required effort.
And with a high possibility it isn't dead because of the flash so you could try to RMA it with good conscience.
Click to expand...

Note sure it's possible anymore :/
You know this guys who put no longer working cards into an oven to melt the thin-solder? Well - have a friend who does this pretty often and I tried it with the LSI controller just 1h ago. Result: Still does not work (nothing is damaged or so) the little single green LED on the PCB still lights up when it's build it.

I think it's a good idea to contact my dealer. Many thanks for this hint. Will try that on Monday!

Sorry for being a bit off-topic :D
 
JensS said:
@Enlightend: I think there is nothing to notify about. The M1015 works with the expander (where did you get it for 200€ by the way?) and the Raid 5 expansion probably won't affect compatibility at all.
Click to expand...

I take you mean the HP Expander?

On eBay, I've been monitoring the submissions on there for a few weeks. This one was listed as a new card. Most cards I've seen pop up were between 370 and 450€, but I've seen from this thread that the prices can flux quite wildly, so I used some patience to get a good price. Granted, the card only managed to stay listed for all of 1 hour ^_^
You have to have some luck and tenacity in monitoring e-bay to get a price like that I guess.
 
Oh ok, I see.
The usual retail prices in Germany, where I live, are about 250 € + shipping. So 200 € would already be a substantial discount for a new card if it were a regular offer in any shop, even if you have to pay a bit more on shipping costs from any other european country.
 
I generaly order stuff from germany and holland, live in belgium. And yeah, german parts are usually a ton cheaper then here.

Update: HP Expander was just delivered. It is a brand new card, seals from HP are all intact :)

Have to say, I was kinda surprised by the size of the box, and the card XD

Time to start ordering some cables to go from Expander to Sata backpanes!

EDIT: Dieta: flashing a firmware shouldn't void waranty. Unless you flashed it with a hacked bios, like we used to do with video cards to adjust base vcore's and fan speeds, etc.
Even when you flashed cross vendor, LSI still makes the firmware for Intel, just rebranded. With the IBM M1015, you actually can download the LSI firmware and when you flash the IBM card with it, it knows its the IBM branded card and changes the look of the firmware to reflect that (also enabling/disabling whatever IBM wishes).
 
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I have an 1880i connected dual linked to an HP SAS Expander. I just noticed as I was looking at my settings, my 12 Hitachi 5k3000 3TB Drives are only negotiating SATA150. I see a few dozen pages back that it has happened to some people and there didn't seem to be much consensus other than to return it. I tried new cables, single linking instead of double linking, everything I could think of. I purchased this expander brand new from Amazon. My question is.... Is it worth the hassle? Will the 150MB/s per channel limit me enough to send it back and be without the array for a week or so until I get a replacement. Are we talking 5% speed cut or 20%, since we are dealing with HDD's and not SSD's here.
 
where do you check the connection speed? My 5k3000's should be showing up today so I'd like to check with my setup as well.

Performance-wise, you should be fine since the 3TB version seems to bench around 130MB/s max sequential, no real speed lost if that's the case.
 
Neb said:
where do you check the connection speed? My 5k3000's should be showing up today so I'd like to check with my setup as well.

Performance-wise, you should be fine since the 3TB version seems to bench around 130MB/s max sequential, no real speed lost if that's the case.
Click to expand...

Go to view physical drive info, and then choose one of the drives in the list. It will show you current connected speed and max possible speed.
 
Thanks for the info, I'll take a look at mine tonight :)

edit: checked my drives and they're showing up as connected @ SATA300
 
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Just wanted to let everyone know that MegaRAID ® SAS 9285-8e works with the expander, so most likely all LSISAS2208 controllers will work with the HP expander. Haven't tried dual link yet, but I will post when I try it.
 
Ok I've been reading this forum for some time and I'm going crazy over the following issues. Hopefully somebody here could shed some light :)

Some background first:

I've purchased from retail the HP SAS expander v2.06 and LSI 3081E-R.

I've plugged them in and the system booted fine but decided to hang indefinitely right before the windows is loading logo. (all drives were found, everything was sort of great up till windows booting). Nothing seemed to work overall however.

I thus went ahead and updated the LSI 3081E-R controller to the latest BIOS and firmware.
NOW, the controller would hang for ages e.g. 10 minutes to initialise anything in BIOS and then for another 10 minutes when loading windows. It would then finally boot into windows with no drives showing and the controller not showing up in LSI software but showing up in the device manager.

Now, here's the weird thing:

1: If all 24 drives are taken out so that no drives are attached to the LSI controller, windows would boot normally. THEN, when all 24 drives are hot-plugged in; EVERY drive would eventually show up and everything would start working :|

2: The second I have any drives plugged in after rebooting or initially powered on the system would take AGES to boot and every menu would take forever to work and then in the end no drives would be discovered.

c'mon maaaan, what gives!? It sort of sounds like fw2.08 should fix it but then who knows, it boots fine with the supermicro 8MV controller only it shows a maximum of 21 drives (probably a faulty supermicro card)

PS - I'm also thinking of buying the HP P411 1GB FBWC (no battery) card for the purpose of upgrading the expander firmware but can't seem to find whether it'll actually let me do it without an HP server (use some hack?) and does anyone know if they come with an external SFF-8088 cables shipped? (My HP SAS expander came with 4 SFF-8087 cables)

Any help would be greatly appreciated :)
 
Are you using 1 cable or 2 between controller and expander, if 2 then you need to remove one of them.

Also does the controller work without the expander?

Also check that one of the LED's near the rear of the card is steady blinking.
 
Have a X8SI6-F Supermicro Mobo
HP SAS Expander
Norco 4224 Case

I want to connect the two SAS connectors on the motherboard to the HP SAS Expander, and then I want to connect all the SAS ports on the HP Expander to the Norco Hard Drive Backplanes.

What SFF Cables will I need?
 
The backplanes have miniSAS-connectors, right?
Then you would need 8 SFF8087-SFF8087 cables.
 
Also,
I'm not using the HP Expander right now, but just using the SAS ports on the motherboard. Using Windows Server 2008 too.

If I move the cables from the SAS ports on the mobo to the HP SAS expander, will the drives changes letters and mess up my current raid setup? Using Flexraid.
 
iirc the letters are assigned via an device-ID written within the first sectors - and as those would not change the letters also should not... ;)

@T3R4H4RD:
Updating to FW 2.08 is the first you should do for sure.
You don't need to buy the expensive SA 411 with FBWC and while you do need 256 MB of cache you don't need any kind of BBU. I would advice to buy the cheapest possible solution.
Furthermore you don't need an actual HP ProLiant server, you just need the controller up and running in any system. This could be a bit tricky since these SA controllers sometimes have a mind of their own. If they work or not depends mostly, but not entirely, on your mainboard.
 
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BigXor said:
Are you using 1 cable or 2 between controller and expander, if 2 then you need to remove one of them.

Also does the controller work without the expander?

Also check that one of the LED's near the rear of the card is steady blinking.
Click to expand...

I've sort of managed to get it working by doing as above but also it was necessary to disable the controller (boot wise) and set it to OS only and now I think it's working. No SMART or nofink and I'm not sure about any 'performance' issues so to speak.
 
@JensS:
As far as I know (according to many sources) the BBWC is absolutely essential in order to flash the HP expander firmware. Otherwisem there's a good deal on right now on an 256mb HP 410 and I didn't touch it due to the battery thing. Also, several users had problems IN HP servers with the 256mb version and claimed that upon switching to the 512mb BBWC version their issues were gone (forgot the source web site)

But thanks everyone it seems to be doing something atm, lets hope it wont fart once I reboot the server :)
 
Im running an areca 1880i and just received my HP Sas expander in the mail. Is there anyone in Melbourne Australia who would like to help try upgrade the firware as my hard drives are only negatiting at SATA150?

Also, how can I tell if dual link is working?
 
noddy said:
Im running an areca 1880i and just received my HP Sas expander in the mail. Is there anyone in Melbourne Australia who would like to help try upgrade the firware as my hard drives are only negatiting at SATA150?

Also, how can I tell if dual link is working?
Click to expand...

noddy-
What firmware are you currently at? I am at 2.06 dual linked to an 1880i, and I have the SATA150 problem as well (same problem either single linked or dual linked, didn't matter). If you get it upgraded to 2.08 let me know if the problem goes away.
 
mwroobel said:
noddy-
What firmware are you currently at? I am at 2.06 dual linked to an 1880i, and I have the SATA150 problem as well (same problem either single linked or dual linked, didn't matter). If you get it upgraded to 2.08 let me know if the problem goes away.
Click to expand...

Thanks mwroobel - I'm at work now, but will post some screen shots when I get home. I took a gamble and bought one of the 'blue' pcb cards. The components and layout are the same as the 'green' pcb but it probably has a much earlier firmware revision. This card only cost aus $180, which is a bargain even if the firmware upgrade can't be done, as a new card from australian retailers would have set me back >$600 !
 
Hey I've been having chronic issues where my 3TB drives revert to RAW (about 3 different drives have done this) and I have to format, losing all data. I'm using my HP expander with Norco 4220 backplanes and an LSI 3442E-R controller which had firmware P20 (1.28.00.00 I believe) until today, since there was an update in August.

Hopefully firmware 1.33.00.00 fares better, but I want to upgrade to one that actually supports 3TB drives. What are your thoughts on these? They happen to seem almost identical, as if the guts were actually the same...

IBM 46M0907 PCI Express 2.0 x8 SAS...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816145017

HighPoint RocketRAID 2721 PCI-Express 2.0 x8...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115086

LSI SATA/SAS 9212-4i4e 6Gb/s PCI-Express 2.0
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118133
 
noddy said:
Thanks mwroobel - I'm at work now, but will post some screen shots when I get home. I took a gamble and bought one of the 'blue' pcb cards.
Click to expand...

Did you ever find anything further info on the 1880i & HP SAS expander only negotiating SATA150 speeds. Did your Blue card negotiate SATA300? I haven't found anything new.
 
Not exactly HP Sas specific. Are HP SAS expanders still the recommended choice for expanders?

I'm using a 1680 attached to several HP SAS cards in norco's 4224 cases. Everything is working great. (ESXi, Oi, ZFS) I'll be up'n my storage needs as soon as I can get more cases. Are the HP SAS still recommended.

I remember reading of several other expanders on the market recently but I haven't considered them (since I wasn't buying at that time).

For what it's worth, I may end up upgrading the card to a 1880 (it's a free spare I have lying around). The previous drives were all samsung 2tb. These new ones are hitachi's 3tb.
 
So, I have everything I ordered now.

Plugged everything in, IBM card shows up at boot, 0 drives detected.
I go into the CTRL+H interface, see the HP Expander there. So thats good, IBM card is working and its perfectly detecting the HP card, when using 1 and 2 cables to link the cards.


But still, no drives detected, not on IBM card, not on HP card.

Any idea what could be wrong here?
 
Sounds like a cable issue, have you tried connecting the drives to the IBM card directly?

Do you have the right breakout cables?
You need forward breakout cables not reverse.
 
How can you know the difference?

I ordered them as Mini-SAS(Host) to SATA(Backplane), the label on the packaging states the same.

Any physical way I can verify they are the correct ones?
 
How do I find out what firmware my HP SAS Expander is?
And how to update the firmware? I downloaded the HP Update thing, but it looks like it wants to install a lot of other stuff too.
 
Mysteriouskk said:
How do I find out what firmware my HP SAS Expander is?
And how to update the firmware? I downloaded the HP Update thing, but it looks like it wants to install a lot of other stuff too.
Click to expand...

What SAS card are you using? For example, with an Areca here as an example, you can see it is at 2.08. (image credit goes to houkouonchi)

 
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