HP SAS Expander Owner's Thread

JensS said:
I finally got my SAS Expander and a LSI 3ware 9690SA-4I raid controller which should work according to the compatibility list in this thread.
At the moment I use it for testing purposes on a Supermicro H8DCE, which is an older dual socket 940 board, and I can't get it to work.
The controller works fine, I've tried that individually. But as soon as I connect the expander the system hangs during boot when the controller tries to initialize. I get "Waiting for 3ware controller to initialize" on the screen forever (or at least for 30 minutes, I then ran out of patience :D).
Since the 9690 already had its most recent firmware I wanted to flash the expander to see if it makes any difference and so I got my SmartArray P410 out. That was flashed to FW 3.66 quickly which HP says is required for updating the expander to FW 2.08.
The P410 as well takes ages to initialize during boot with the expander connected but at least it will get through at some point, taking somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes I think.
Unfortunately the HP Update Tool doesn't work properly, it boots via USB and then stops with a black screen doing absolutely nothing. I will try this in a ProLiant server later, but since that lies on my workbench in bits I will rely on the working hardware for the moment.
The expander shows up in ACU when conncted to the P410 and it told me that it has FW 2.06, so that is pretty recent as well.
So at this point I can tell that both controllers have the recent firmware and the expander has FW 2.06.

Long story short:

1. Is it normal that controllers take ages to initialize with the expander connected?
2. Any ideas why the LSI controller doesn't initialize at all with the expander connected?
3. Are there any other ways to update the FW on the expander?

Thx in advance, any help is much appreciated :)
Click to expand...

Still having these issues...

I'm currently working together with the LSI support on that issue and they had some ideas about it, but nothing helped so far.
What I've done:
- Updated FW on controller and expander to latest version
- Fixed link speed in the controller setting to 3 Gbps
- Connected more drives (now 14 in total on 4 ports, all of them SATA 3 Gbps) to minimize possible timeouts on the empty ports
- Connected the SAS cable to the expander after successful initialization and did a rescan on the controller which results in a non responding controller

Currently I'm waiting for some more ideas from the LSI support and I've PM'ed SeanG about this since he's the one that verified that this setup will work and hope to get some input from him as well.

@Dustin: Since you sell those damn things and I think you therefore have quite a lot experience with them, do you think you could provide some valuable information on this issue?
 
Don't expect too much from LSI support, magic might happen, but will take many months, maybe years...
 
larsiusprime said:
@Synergy Dustin - I'd like to buy an SAS Expander from you. What's the procedure? Do you take paypal?
Click to expand...

Don't waste your time, he never responds to his PMs nor his emails. I sent one to him back in December and never heard back. Save yourself the PITA and just grab one at the egg.
 
jarman said:
Don't waste your time, he never responds to his PMs nor his emails. I sent one to him back in December and never heard back. Save yourself the PITA and just grab one at the egg.
Click to expand...

He responded to my PM within an hour of sending it. And the price he quoted was significantly lower than the price at newegg...
 
Re: response, I also received a quick response. I had to call a couple times to get contact with him on the phone but I was able to place an order and the expander shipped the same day.
 
jarman said:
Don't waste your time, he never responds to his PMs nor his emails. I sent one to him back in December and never heard back. Save yourself the PITA and just grab one at the egg.
Click to expand...

I respond quickly, but don't have the time to reply to requests to ship outside the US.

I also won't have info on compatibility with these and 3rd party controllers. Only the HP units.
 
JensS said:
Still having these issues...

@Dustin: Since you sell those damn things and I think you therefore have quite a lot experience with them, do you think you could provide some valuable information on this issue?
Click to expand...

I have no firsthand experience with them being used outside of an HP server. Your best bet is feedback here.
 
If anyone outside the US still wants one, I've forwarded them to probably at least 10 people at this point and can still do so. Send me a PM if interested.
 
Gday guys,

I know this isn't the thread to post this in... but actually I couldn't find a thread to put this.

Anyways, I have in my posession a drive cage from a HP ML570 G3/4 server with backplane and sas expander attached.

I am trying to work out the pin out fo the 10pin power connector and am a bit stumped.

Anyone know of a place I could start? as noone I know has one of this model servers for me to prod and probe to find out myself. and I am no good with electronics.

I have had a quick probe with the multimeter and that gave me no clues. (thought I would try to fine which pins of the SAS/SATA power connections could track back to the 10pin power plug) to try to work out 12v 5v etc.)

But I am only confusing myself further.

I wouldn't be surprised if the pinout was the same as my ML350 G5 but I am not game enought to try power it with it's 10pin plug just yet.

Photo's and more info here if anyone has ideas
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=962861

.
 
@Stanza33:

Saw your post on overclockers.com.au ... I would suggest to trace your way back from the SATA/SAS connectors. The 15pin end of each slot is the power connector. Follow this link to look up the SATA power pins. Pin one should be towards the middle of each socket connector.

2.5" drives usually only use 5V power, so there is the possibility that the 3.3V and 12V is not even connected. Although it appears from the image you posted that shows the 10pin power header that the 12V is indeed connected to each SATA connector...

Set your multimeter to continuity testing and get cracking :)

Hope this helps.
 
Yes mate thanks it does help.

The HP SAS drives have
12v 05.A
5v 0.8A

Written on their labels... so maybe SAS drives use the 12v over normal SATA drives?
I ues for this being A SAS backplane it's going to have 12v attached then.

I will probe the other servers 10pin plug 1st... see what voltages it has on the red and pinky/white stripe cables. and which pins they are attached to. then see if this matches up. If not I will have to swap some wires around eh;)

Stanza.
 
Hi, I've got an HP SAS Expander connected to an HP P410i (all updated with the latest firmware, all connected with identical SFF-8087 cables) in a RPC-4220. For some reason my WD1001FALS-0 (WD 1 tb black edition) drives are only being auto negotiated at 1.5 Gbps and I was inquring if there a known bug or known trick required getting the expander to negotiate the drives at a higher speed. If i take the same cable and connect directly to the card i connect at 3 Gbps without an issue. I've rest most of the forum posts and have seen one other user with a similar issue, however someone private message him the solution to his problem i believe so I was unable to get a clear cut and dry answer on my own.
 
HI i just got my expander card.

Can anybody recomend me a small atx micro atx mother board to power this exander card..

A very cheap one.

if one can be found that does not need cpu and ram it would be nice.!
 
Hi all,

I have just outgrown my current case and have a Norco 4224 on the way, I have also ordered an HP SAS Expander and intend to hook this up to my HP SC44Ge PCIe SAS controller (re-branded LSI SAS3442E-R).

I have ordered 6 x SFF8087 to SFF8087 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3war...ce=google+shopping&utm_medium=google+shopping for connectivity between the Expander and the Norco case (are these directional?).

I am unsure on which cable to get to connect the controller card to the expander, I think I have two options here either SFF8470 to SFF8088 (both external connections) or SFF8484 to SFF8088 (internal controller to external expander), will both of these work? which is the better option?

Thanks for your help guys.
 
You are going to require sff-8484 HOST to sff-8087 TARGET

Internal on the SC44Ge to internal on the SAS expander

AFAIK the SAS expander external port is only for Daisy chaining... ie out not an in port
 
Cool. that means that I can use the external ports on both the controller and the expander, is that right?
 
Thank you for all your help guys, I am now going to order the external cable, you'd think they're made out of gold taking into account their price :eek: :rolleyes:.

Oh...forgot to ask...can the HP expander's firmware be upgraded via the HP Smart Array P400, I know the OP only mentions the new controllers but one can only but hope.
 
Expander arrived today, didn't know these came with 4x sff8087 to sff8087 cables in the box, if I had known that I would have only ordered 2 rather than six that I thought I needed.

I wonder if everyone's expander arrived with the cables?
 
nbat58 said:
Expander arrived today, didn't know these came with 4x sff8087 to sff8087 cables in the box, if I had known that I would have only ordered 2 rather than six that I thought I needed.

I wonder if everyone's expander arrived with the cables?
Click to expand...

I had one that came with none. Then my second came with 2. Lucky you with 4.
 
Possibly a fluke, there was 2 identical cables 1m long and 2 50cm long that looked different to the longer cables, I have taken the caps off and checked, all were sff8087 to sff8087.

Te above arrived in a sealed HP box with the expander.
 
Have anyone made SATA Power -> PCI-E 1x/4x connector finally?
I would love to do single line connector from modular PSU (or via SATA power cable which is going straight from the PSU) directly to PCI-E connector but I still not sure how to proceed.

From what I seen at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Pinout I need to provide +12V to pins 1 & 2 on side B and to pins 2 & 3 on side A, +3.3V to pins 8 (and 10? What aux means?) on side B and to pins 9 & 10 on side A plus ground pins 4 & 7 on side B and 4 (and 11? What PWRGD means?) on side A.

So the main questions are:
1) Is there any difference between +12V on pins 1 & 2 on side B?
2) Is there any difference between +3.3V on pins 8 & 10 on side B?
3) Should be pin 11 on side A be grounded?

If it would be simple (like I hope) I need to get (from modular PSU connector) one 3.3V wire (pin1), two ground wires (pins 3 & 4) and finally one 12V wire (pin 5). To correspond to SATA power those are pins 1,2,3 (3.3V), pins 4,5,6 and 10,11,12 (ground) and pins 13,14,15 (12V).

If anyone may helps I will provide the final guide on how to do it for community.

Thank you!
 
I seen it, no valid guide there. I know that HP expander requires power only, but HOW to provide that power, that's question.

In that thread I additionally seen that "As a minimum you will need to add a 10kOhm pull-up resistor on A11 PWRGD (Power Good) signal to +3.3V! " but no one neither confirmed nor rejected this. That's why I've asked several question (in both threads, btw), one of them about B10 pin, other about differently painted 12V on side B. Perhaps some (simple) components are to be applied as well.
 
My expander arrived with no cables. The only ones I have are 1M long so it has made cabling a bit of a troublesome task.

My rig is an X8SI6-F using the on-board LSI2008 flashed to 9211-8i IT, dual linked to the SAS expander and using a Norco 4224... will be used for ZFS...question:

Is the discovery error stuff at boot just a bug in the LSI v9.00.00.00 FW? I saw a document regarding discovery errors at boot with cascading setups for other LSI controllers with 9.x firmware. Timeout takes over a minute but does find the drives. I haven't yet tested without the SAS expander connected as it seems to work and I need to get this machine into production ASAP.
 
True said:
My expander arrived with no cables. The only ones I have are 1M long so it has made cabling a bit of a troublesome task.

My rig is an X8SI6-F using the on-board LSI2008 flashed to 9211-8i IT, dual linked to the SAS expander and using a Norco 4224... will be used for ZFS...question:

Is the discovery error stuff at boot just a bug in the LSI v9.00.00.00 FW? I saw a document regarding discovery errors at boot with cascading setups for other LSI controllers with 9.x firmware. Timeout takes over a minute but does find the drives. I haven't yet tested without the SAS expander connected as it seems to work and I need to get this machine into production ASAP.
Click to expand...

I have an X8SI6-F with a 2.06. I initially tried 8.0.0.0 (about 4 months ago), and ran into many troubles with the duplicate drives like Giga had. There was a post by tormentum mentioning that v7 works. I just went back to v7 and it does indeed pick up my drives correctly. http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1037211314&postcount=1618

When i ignored the errors, I had abysmal performance (well, I couldnt get any faster than 130MB/s or similar). Have not tested performance again, but looking good so far.
If you are urgent to get these into production (at home or a real business) I probably would avoid using a firmware which is giving you errors.
 
Anyone knows how I can check the firmware of the HP Expander, my system is up and running but I am not sure how to also check if all connection are seen by the system or not, any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Successfully tested LSI 3Ware 9750-8i and -4i with the expander.

@nbat58: That depends on the controller you are using. They detect the expander and will tell you that there is an expander connected. Some controllers refer to it as an enclosure. This will show up somewhere in the configuration menu (again, it depends on your type of controller).
There is an example of how it may look with an Areca controller in the initial post: http://i.imagehost.org/0563/32drive_raid6_b.jpg
If you use a HP controller you can look it up using the Array Configuration Utility. The expander will show up in the tree view on the left (depending on logical or physical view), firmware version will be shown under its preferences.
If it is any LSI controller you can use the 3DM2, it will tell you the firmware version under "Monitor" -> "Enclosure Support". Since this isn't really an enclore there isn't much information about it but it will show you the firmware version.

In the same way you can check if your controller has detected the expander and all connected drives. Your "system" as such probably won't see any of this information by itself. If the driver for the controller is working properly it will only tell you about the logical drives.
 
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