HP SAS Expander Owner's Thread

I have a P410 with 6.64 FW, an HP SAS 6G expander with 2.06 FW, and an HP SAS 12G expander with 4.21 FW. I was able to get the 12G upgraded from 4.21 to 4.22 using the P410. I'm having compatibility issues with the 12G and my Areca 1883 cards, so I am reverting back to the 6G card, but I want to update the FW. No matter what I do, the P410 cannot find the 6G expander card. I tried just port 8 to one of the two ports on the P410. Then both ports 8 and 9 to the two on the P410. Still nothing, no device found during discovery of the 2.10 FW upgrade in Linux. lsscsi shows the P410 card the same as it did when the 12G updated (the 6G and 12G never show up in lsscsi for me, only the P410). Any ideas on how to get this upgraded? My main purpose is to see if I get better SATA 3.0 connections on my WD 10tb drives (some do connect at 3.0 but most connect at 1.5).
 
I also use the HP expander with an Areca 1882. But SATA300 is too slow for 2020... right :) So which Expander card does 6G/12G and is affordable?
 
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I also use the HP expander with an Areca 1882. But SATA300 is too slow for 2020... right :) So which Expander card does 6G/12G and is affordable?
Depends on how you're using your server. With some systems, such as unRAID, most people use SSD for cache writes and then dump the cache to spinning drives overnight. Things that need fast read speeds are kept on the SSD cache.

Cheers!
 
I also use the HP expander with an Areca 1882. But SATA300 is too slow for 2020... right :) So which Expander card does 6G/12G and is affordable?
As long as you are using spinners, it is more than enough. If you are using SSDs then it would be a good idea to upgrade. Just remember if you move to a 12G SAS expander you also need to upgrade your HBA and devices to 12G to get end-to-end throughput Increasesto 12G. If you just hang a 12G expander on your existing 1882 with SATA drives you will see NO increase in speed.
 
Hi new to forums and looks like I'm pretty late to the party.
For the last couple of weeks I've been trying to get this working, but have no idea what I'm doing

Got a HP G1610T Gen8 microserver.
Want to add more than 4 drives using a HP SAS Expander card (Green PCB).

I've tried the following cards in my server
1) P222 Raid Controller - FW 8.32 - Set to HBA mode
2) LSI SAS9207-8E - FW P20 - Set to IT mode (BIOS is set to one iteration older as it gave red screen)

And in an old PC case I have an old motherboard with a HP 24 Bay SAS Expander card and currently 3 hdds installed for quick testing

And theses are connected using a SFF8088 - SFF8088 cable

Not sure what firmware the SAS Expander is on, not sure how to check that.
I have just found a place to get the Gen8.1 Service Pack
Downloaded the SAS Expander firmware, I assume this is right one,
https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?swItemId=MTX_07e17cded9e8409ea4b9d7ea74

Placed it into the SPP usb in /hp/swpackages
Ran in firmware update, now it detect the additional component.
But when it comes to selecting which updates I want to install. The SAS firmware isnt listed at all

Now these 59 pages is a lot to read.
I have a HP server, so shouldnt it update?
Or do I have to use a SFF8087 cable and connect to the internal port of my P222 card, to Port 9C on the SAS Expander in order for this to upgrade?
Or will I have to do it the Linux Terminal way?

With the SAS Expander, my server does not detect any drives at all!

The closest I have got is replacing the SAS Expander with one of these cards
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-Ports-...465615?hash=item2165c7110f:g:b38AAOSwukRcxWWs

But for some reason only 2 of the drives are being detected.
I've swapped the SFF8087-SATA cables with a different one.
But still, only 2 drives being detected.
Doesnt matter if I use the P222 or LSI card. Same thing.

Help?

----------
edit 1

So now trying to update the sas via ubuntu
But still the sas is not detected.
Using the terminal command lsscsi -H, it shows the 4 drives in the server, then [4] mpt2sas
Which I assume is the LSI card.
So why isnt it showing up?

---------
edit 2

Got a 8087-8087 cable
Plugged one end into the internal P222 port
Other end into Port 8C on SAS
Ran Ubuntu Linux Terminal, still only pickin up the P222, wont show the SAS

Tried again with SPP firmware update, still wont include the update in list in Step 2 Review

So how do I update the card if I cant do it either way here???
 
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Personaly i have 2-3 connected LSI 9211 cards + 4 x HP SAS Expanders connected and never had any issues and if needed.. easily fixed in bios..
 
I'm at a complete loss.
I've mixed and matched the 2 cards in my server,
how the sas is connected to the server
even mixed and matched different cables and ports.

I just cant get my sas expander to work, de detected in linux terminal, update or even check what firmware its on....
Even removed the server board from main unit so I could attach sas expander directly to server. Still cant detect or update.

Nor any idea why the adaptor I linked in previous post only detects 2 drives.
And only with cables P2 and P3
Doesnt matter which post I use in the adaptor, or even use a different cable..... :/

Update:
So now even bought a P410 Controller, which should be compatible with this sas
Still not being detected....

---------

Edit


FINALLY! Got it working!!!!!

Created a post on reddit and got a reply from user skels130
"According to my research, many, if not most, motherboards will not power a paid device without a CPU."

I bought a PCI-E Rise board, the ones people use for bitcoin mining with multiple GPUs
And it worked!


Also easy way to tell if the SAS Expander will work in your motherboard is:
Turn it on.
If LED R6 is remains Solid Green permanently then your motherboards isnt powering it up fully
If LED R6 is Solid Green for a few seconds, then goes to a continuous blink, then it's powered up properly

Linux terminal in Ubuntu still did not detect the SAS expander but did detect a Logical volume connected to it
But the Service Pack for Proliant boot USB worked and updated the SAS Expander firmware to latest, 2.10C

Also fixed the 2 drive detected issue.
Once I detected by the SPP boot USB, it then shows the drives in the Smart Storage Administrator
From there I cleared the current configuration and set each drive to a separate individual Raid 0 "Array"

Now all external 3 drives connected to the expander are being detected by the server.
now to test withxpenology.
 
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Hello all,

I am new here and have been wanting to do something like this with an expander card. I was wondering if I could get some help.

if I get the hp expander card, then get the LSI SAS9201-16e, I hook up 12 drives to the expander card, then would I really only need one cable from the expander to the lsi card?

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you
Bill
 
Hi all,

I am trying to update the firmware on the HP expander, I don't have an HP server so I am trying the linux route. I have ubutnu 18.04 installed and updated, I installed my drivers for my areca 1880ix-12 and its recognized plus the drives that are connected to the HP expander. but Ubutnu doesnt seem to recognize the HP expander?

this all works properly in Windows server 2016 but don't see an option to update firmware in windows.

I tried this guide... but lsscsi -g | grep HP doesn't show my expander.

https://serverfault.com/questions/6...as-expander-card-without-smart-array-controll

Does anyone have other ideas or tricks?

Thank you
Bill
 
The Areca card is not presenting the device to the OS. Unless you have a specific reason that requires you to update the firmware on the card, I wouldn't bother with it.
 
The Areca card is not presenting the device to the OS. Unless you have a specific reason that requires you to update the firmware on the card, I wouldn't bother with it.

I am currently running firmware 2.06 and HP recommends to update the firmware, is there anyway to have the card pass the device to the OS?
 
Hi Guys,
I've studied this thread fairly extensively, but can't see a concrete solution. I have an HP 468405-002, configured to use 24 ports. I would much prefer to use all of the board ports as HDD connections, but if I connect to the 'TO CONTROLLER' ports, it raises an error. The card is connected by the external 8088 port to an LSI Logic SAS9201-16e Quad Port card in the server machine.

Based on this thread the best idea I'm working down is disabling SES2, but I'm fairly far off the ball on that one.

Apologies I forgot to actually ask the question: does anyone have any advice, ideas or experience with this? What model cards are you aware of that natively can address 32 drives or have done with say a setting or firmware change?
 
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I have an LSI 9211-8i card. I have been searching for a definite answer to the question, if I go the cheapo HP SAS Expander 3GBs route, will it support hard drives over 2TB in size?

For more information on my actual setup: I have a 15 bay server chassis. All 5 of the SATA ports on the motherboard are used and all 8 of the SAS to SATA cables are in use from the LSI card. I just need to expand 2 more drives but all my drives are 4TBs.

Some say you need to flash the firmware on the HP cards to latest. Some say as long as your controller card supports the drives the expander card doesn't matter. Some say no it will never work because it has to be a 6Gbs capable extender card. Is there an answer to this question?
 
I have an LSI 9211-8i card. I have been searching for a definite answer to the question, if I go the cheapo HP SAS Expander 3GBs route, will it support hard drives over 2TB in size?

For more information on my actual setup: I have a 15 bay server chassis. All 5 of the SATA ports on the motherboard are used and all 8 of the SAS to SATA cables are in use from the LSI card. I just need to expand 2 more drives but all my drives are 4TBs.

Some say you need to flash the firmware on the HP cards to latest. Some say as long as your controller card supports the drives the expander card doesn't matter. Some say no it will never work because it has to be a 6Gbs capable extender card. Is there an answer to this question?
Yes, it will. You will only link at either 1.5 or 3.0 depending on your endpoint drive or firmware version.
 
I solved every problem I had with the HP SAS Expander. All the drives having the same ID, not working reliably with an LSI 9260 or 9361 adapter. Not working with a P420 adapter ...

I replaced it with a Lenovo SAS Expander which just plain works like magic with my LSI 9361-8i controller.

I sooooo wanted the HP unit to work, because I really really really wanted that external SAS port so I could connect more SAS drives.

The reality is, a 1U server is simply NOT a good platform for an ESXi server with local SAS backed datastores.

Sure there is a lot of room for argument in this post. To clarify, my goal was to run ESXi 7 with a controller that would be supported for a while. I chose the 9361-8i. Because this card has Mini SAS HD ports, and no suitable cables are available that work with my supermicro server backplane (pesky individual connector ports), I chose to go with the HPE 6G SAS Expander, since this would let me use a SAS 12G to SAS 6G cable, AND get an external SAS connector for external storage. All while working with the SAS cables that came with the system (which, were desinged for it). Always use as much original stuff as you can.

I should know better. In the future, 1U servers will be used by me for NAS heads and Hypervisors (depending on controller requirements). Anything with large amounts of local spinning/SSD drives will be 2U with ample slots for controllers, and external expansion if the capacity demands require it.
 
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Hello all,

Does anyone know, if the raid card dies that is being used along with the hp expander, you can still use a different raid card as long as as its the same brand?
 
The new raid card even if it is the same exact model won’t have your raid drive config on it. Some Lsi/Areca cards and HP/Dell Oem versions of these cards may have a “drive import” feature that is pretty hit and miss, and a config export and import. I usually take screenshots.
 
The new raid card even if it is the same exact model won’t have your raid drive config on it. Some Lsi/Areca cards and HP/Dell Oem versions of these cards may have a “drive import” feature that is pretty hit and miss, and a config export and import. I usually take screenshots.
I was running an Areca arc-1880ix-12, but for some reason it has died or corrupt firmware, I was reading that it can do RAID Roaming, would that help me here?
 
Hi, been a long time off the site and computer hardware, but recently started getting back into it because next year I should be able to finally move into my new home.

So, one thing I decided to overhaul first was my file server. Right now it just has a low power AMD Athlon CPU/MB combo and an old LSI 8708 RAID card with a few 2TB HDD´s.

I might change the CPU/MB later, but for now it will do, what I really need to upgrade is the RAID card and HDD´s. I checked ebay and it seems I can get a LSI 9260-8i card for dirty cheap, seems like a solid choice since I only use the server for storing my personal files and movies.

As I don´t have any experience with Expanders, figured I´d ask in this thread before buying anything to make sure that what I aim to do is possible.

Basically what I had in mind is buy the LSI 9260-8i card now, build a RAID6 array using 6 TB (or maybe 8TB) drives with it and in the future, when I hit the 8 drive limit for this card, buy an expander and use it to add more drives.

My biggest concern is that, should I add the expander in the future when I already have an array with TBs of data, will I have to move the data somewhere else to reconfigure the cards or something of the sort? Or it would be just a case of plugging the Expander on the RAID card and moving some of the drives to the Expander?

I ask because it would be really complicated to move that much data, it´s not like I´d have another file server to backup things to.
 
Would anyone be able to tell me what the 6 leds are for on the HP expander? my card isnt working so trying to troubleshoot.

right now I have it connected as I always did but only the 1st three leds are on (solid green).

Any ideas?

thank you
Bill
 
Hi all, I'm considering getting a HP SAS expander, and I've had a few questions. I'd like to use it on Windows 10 in order to directly attach SATA drives. Specially the WD Green and WD Purple series. They're media drives so they only ever get accessed sporadically - only 1-4 drives will be accessed at any one time, but I have a lot of drives.

1. Do the drivers still work under the latest version of Windows 10, 21H1?

2. Will the card work on a 1x slot? Will the speed suffer a lot? I understand some of the cards are pcie 2.0. Will the card downgrade other ports on my motherboard to pcie 2.0? I'm on an Intel 8086K based system.

3. I've seen multiple cards on eBay which are described as "HP SAS Expander". Which ones is this thread about? Which ones are "the good ones"? What's the difference between a -001 and -002 card?
Here are the ones I've found:

468405-001
468405-002
468406-B21
468406-B21-RFB
487738-001
487738-002
727250-B21
727252-001
727253-001
761879-001
769635-B21
800360-001
804228-B21
847405-001
854763-001
854764-001
874576-B21
876907-001
030-2769-001
36-07-00023-R
AEC-83605

4. I've seen people mention running this card on its own - not plugged into pcie anywhere. Does this mean it's essentially a computer of its own that'll allow accessing drives connected to it through its external SAS port? How does that work? It's super curious. On the computer end (eg my Windows desktop), what would I need to interface with one such card? Or two such cards?


Thanks a lot and I appreciate the information
 
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Hi all, I'm considering getting a HP SAS expander, and I've had a few questions. I'd like to use it on Windows 10 in order to directly attach SATA drives. Specially the WD Green and WD Purple series. They're media drives so they only ever get accessed sporadically - only 1-4 drives will be accessed at any one time, but I have a lot of drives.

1. Do the drivers still work under the latest version of Windows 10, 21H1?

2. Will the card work on a 1x slot? Will the speed suffer a lot? I understand some of the cards are pcie 2.0. Will the card downgrade other ports on my motherboard to pcie 2.0? I'm on an Intel 8086K based system.

3. I've seen multiple cards on eBay which are described as "HP SAS Expander". Which ones is this thread about? Which ones are "the good ones"? What's the difference between a -001 and -002 card?
Here are the ones I've found:

468405-001
468405-002
468406-B21
468406-B21-RFB
487738-001
487738-002
727250-B21
727252-001
727253-001
761879-001
769635-B21
800360-001
804228-B21
847405-001
854763-001
854764-001
874576-B21
876907-001
030-2769-001
36-07-00023-R
AEC-83605

4. I've seen people mention running this card on its own - not plugged into pcie anywhere. Does this mean it's essentially a computer of its own that'll allow accessing drives connected to it through its external SAS port? How does that work? It's super curious. On the computer end (eg my Windows desktop), what would I need to interface with one such card? Or two such cards?


Thanks a lot and I appreciate the information

1: It's driverless, your computer has no idea it is there. It needs to be connected to a SAS card which then presents the disks connected to it to the PC as connected to itself.

2: The card isn't detected by the mainboard, it's plugged into a PCIe slot simply to get power.

3: Going to leave someone else to share any differences between model numbers.

4: Cards like that are really meant to be used in separate enclosures (but you can build everything into just one enclosure) that simply have power for disks and this card. It is NOT a computer in itself. A SAS Expander does not function by itself, it requires an actual SAS Controller to do the controlling of the disks and presenting the disks to the OS.

So to answer that question, you need a SAS Expander AND a SAS Controller to present the disks connected to the expander to your PC.
 
1: It's driverless, your computer has no idea it is there. It needs to be connected to a SAS card which then presents the disks connected to it to the PC as connected to itself.

2: The card isn't detected by the mainboard, it's plugged into a PCIe slot simply to get power.

3: Going to leave someone else to share any differences between model numbers.

4: Cards like that are really meant to be used in separate enclosures (but you can build everything into just one enclosure) that simply have power for disks and this card. It is NOT a computer in itself. A SAS Expander does not function by itself, it requires an actual SAS Controller to do the controlling of the disks and presenting the disks to the OS.

So to answer that question, you need a SAS Expander AND a SAS Controller to present the disks connected to the expander to your PC.

Thanks a lot. That makes more sense now.

So am I right to think that all the cards marked as expanders will work stand alone?

OK, so I'd need to use an SAS card in my Windows computer. What's a relatively inexpensive one that will do the job and which works on the latest Windows 10 versions? Am I just looking for an SAS HBA with an external SAS port? Or does it need to have any specific features?

What do I need to do in order to use more than one SAS expander? Can those be daisy chained? I see SAS switch blades on ebay, but not stand-alone units, and getting a full blade rack for one blade is proabably more hassle than it's worth. I'd like to be able to use two SAS expanders for a total of 48 SATA drives.

How does Windows 10 see those drives? Do they just appear as normal drives which can be formatted, partitioned, etc? Will I be able to mount them from within a VM? Or are they some sort of special storage device that's more exotic?

Thanks
 
Thanks a lot. That makes more sense now.

So am I right to think that all the cards marked as expanders will work stand alone?

OK, so I'd need to use an SAS card in my Windows computer. What's a relatively inexpensive one that will do the job and which works on the latest Windows 10 versions? Am I just looking for an SAS HBA with an external SAS port? Or does it need to have any specific features?

What do I need to do in order to use more than one SAS expander? Can those be daisy chained? I see SAS switch blades on ebay, but not stand-alone units, and getting a full blade rack for one blade is proabably more hassle than it's worth. I'd like to be able to use two SAS expanders for a total of 48 SATA drives.

How does Windows 10 see those drives? Do they just appear as normal drives which can be formatted, partitioned, etc? Will I be able to mount them from within a VM? Or are they some sort of special storage device that's more exotic?

Thanks
No need for anything fancy like blades.

Anything LSI 9211-8i labeled on ebay should work with a 24-port SAS Expander, some are feature locked by the vendor (IBM, HP, etc) but can be flashed to a plain 9211-8i.

You can daisy chain them, but you have to remember, the SAS controller has a set amount of bandwidth through PCIe and the SAS link between the expander and the controller has a set bandwidth too. And with modern SSD's, its easier to saturate these links than you may think.

If you intend to setup an array with a ton of disks, calculating in advance how much bandwidth you'll use on the card is wise. You may be better off simply buying more than 1 SAS Controller.

Theoretically, a SAS Controller can handle 65,535 devices, so you could theoretically connect 8 24-port expander cards to a controller to get 186 disks connected to that one card, connect expanders to ever available port of those expanders and one and on.

The SAS Controller I used when I still used a HP SAS Expander was an IBM M1015 (which can be flashed to an LSI 9211-8i IT mode controller, most of these cards are really just LSI cards with custom BIOS).

It has 2 internal SAS ports I linked to 2 of the SAS ports of the expander (they can pool interlink connections).

On eBay, just look for any LSI 9211-8i based card with the amount of internal or external ports you require.

I personally switched to simply buying SAS Enclosures as these days you can get those for as little as $100 and they include their own SAS Expander.

You should be able to find some controllers named in this very thread you could use or simple post a new thread asking which controller to buy.
 
Thanks a lot. That makes more sense now.

So am I right to think that all the cards marked as expanders will work stand alone?

OK, so I'd need to use an SAS card in my Windows computer. What's a relatively inexpensive one that will do the job and which works on the latest Windows 10 versions? Am I just looking for an SAS HBA with an external SAS port? Or does it need to have any specific features?

What do I need to do in order to use more than one SAS expander? Can those be daisy chained? I see SAS switch blades on ebay, but not stand-alone units, and getting a full blade rack for one blade is proabably more hassle than it's worth. I'd like to be able to use two SAS expanders for a total of 48 SATA drives.

How does Windows 10 see those drives? Do they just appear as normal drives which can be formatted, partitioned, etc? Will I be able to mount them from within a VM? Or are they some sort of special storage device that's more exotic?

Thanks
I've connected two HP expander cards to a single LSI 9211-8i HBA just for testing purposes. Was able to see any and all drives connected to any of the ports on both expander cards. Never tried daisy-chaining them.

Flashing the firmware (on either an HBA or expander) is not for the timid, at least if you don't have an HP server (in the case of flashing an expander). I'd have to look around to find the procedure, and I know I have it saved somewhere... Have to dig out the procedure for flashing an HBA anyway, just acquired another one for a spare.
 
Hello guys !

First of all, I joined the forum for this question (noob inside ;)) and thank you in advance for your help.

I’ve bought two adaptec expanders to work with my lsi and dell cards.

The first card, connected to my lsi 9361-8i worked directly.

The second card (connected to my dell H730) does not want to work as direct mapping is not disabled on the host.
I’ve tried quite everything since yesterday evening to disable it, without success unfortunately.


could you help me out ?
Tx in advance,
Alexandre
 
Hello guys !

First of all, I joined the forum for this question (noob inside ;)) and thank you in advance for your help.

I’ve bought two adaptec expanders to work with my lsi and dell cards.

The first card, connected to my lsi 9361-8i worked directly.

The second card (connected to my dell H730) does not want to work as direct mapping is not disabled on the host.
I’ve tried quite everything since yesterday evening to disable it, without success unfortunately.


could you help me out ?
Tx in advance,
Alexandre
H730 is a LSI SAS 3108 based card, that may be the issue.
 
Thanks !
I’m under windows and tried the very same commands without success.
I never tried Linux, do you think it’s worths it to try the command in this environment ?
 
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