Consumer SDD in a DL380 Gen8 w/ P420i Controller?

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richardm

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Sep 27, 2013
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My apologies if this is the wrong forum. I wasn't sure about the best place to post this.

I have a DL380 Gen8 in my homelab with a P420i RAID controller minus the cache module. It currently has 8x SFF SAS disks. I'm seeing conflicting advice on whether or not I can stick consumer SATA disks (SSD or HDD) into the existing trays and have the server recognize the drives, allow me to use them, and not lose its mind. I don't mind some errors getting thrown -- this is just a homelab -- but I'm hoping the box can actually use them and won't go into some kind of error state with the fans running 5000 RPM or something.

Any thoughts?
 

Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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Anytime you exit approved products you don't know if the drive will give temp updates needed to the controller to keep it going full fans.
Also, you are out of ports with 8 drives active.
 
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richardm

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Sep 27, 2013
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Right.. The drive bays are full. I'd pull 1-2 of the existing drives.

I have a spare laptop drive here. I might just try it out and see what happens.
 

Patriot

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Right.. The drive bays are full. I'd pull 1-2 of the existing drives.

I have a spare laptop drive here. I might just try it out and see what happens.
Honestly that is the best idea... just try what is sitting around.
 

richardm

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Sep 27, 2013
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I did some further reading.. It seems that I'll probably be successful with tossing an SSD into one of the sleds provided I choose the correct SSD. Just about anything offered as "enterprise" seems to be fine (Intel DC series is mentioned often) along with the MX300 and certain higher-end Intel and Samsung consumer drives. The key seems to be having the SMART data presented in a format the P420 understands.
 

richardm

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Sep 27, 2013
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Update: Intel 730 SSD works, but not in HBA mode (disk passthru). ESXi creates a partition but can't format it for some reason. Put the P420i back into its default mode and the SSD is working perfectly as a single drive RAID 0. ESXi is fully aware that it's an SSD, too.

No errors in POST, no amber lights, clean event log.
 
Oct 9, 2016
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I did some further reading.. It seems that I'll probably be successful with tossing an SSD into one of the sleds provided I choose the correct SSD. Just about anything offered as "enterprise" seems to be fine (Intel DC series is mentioned often) along with the MX300 and certain higher-end Intel and Samsung consumer drives. The key seems to be having the SMART data presented in a format the P420 understands.
So, are you affirming that Crucial MX300 (currently 110EUR) is compatible with P420i ? It would be a nice deal !
 

richardm

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Sep 27, 2013
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So, are you affirming that Crucial MX300 (currently 110EUR) is compatible with P420i ? It would be a nice deal !
In my Google research, I found references to the MX300 working with a P420i/DL380. But I did not try it. I only have experience with the Intel 730.

If you try an MX300, please report back. The MX300 is not expensive. =)
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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PM863 should work as HP use them and I guess different firmware but maybe worth a try since you can usually find them easily enough and cheap enough.
 

Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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just making a note... the M500 didn't work well... they had signal integrity issues dropped link from 6gbps to 3gbps... so get a readout from hpsacli.
 
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richardm

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Sep 27, 2013
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Bumping this for further discussion. Wondering if anyone can provide additional reports on their success with non-HP drives in a Proliant server.
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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Bumping this for further discussion. Wondering if anyone can provide additional reports on their success with non-HP drives in a Proliant server.
G7 had used some without issues but fans 100% on Gen8, does depend on drive though, only did it to move some data around, never thought of it as a permemant idea, why not just eBay to buy some geninue HPE drives, like the 1.6tb intel 3500 series SSD for $300 that we’re actually HPE ones.
 

richardm

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Sep 27, 2013
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$300 is a pretty good price for 1.6TB. I was looking at eBay drives earlier today but I was miffed at how many sellers aren't putting up a screenshot of the drive's SMART data. It'd be nice to see life remaining, write TBs, etc.
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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For some people it’s probably just a case of not worth the effort, off lease servers you just assume it runs so strip it and sell it fast as possible to make the money back.
 

mrkrad

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Oct 13, 2012
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if you can go sas, do it! far more robust wiring technology. especially when not sharing with sata
 

RGuyler

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Apr 13, 2018
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I have a pair of DL380 G8s that have SM953 NVMEs installed. I used NVME to avoid this very issue with the P420i. Funny enough the P420i can still "see" the drives in the configuration tool (GUI version) and report on their write life, even thought they aren't connected.

The one strange issue that I ran across is when I have a logical drive configured with the boot flag set on the P420i, the server would not complete the POST with that NVME installed. Worked fine with a PM963 NVME but not with the Sm953 so it may just be a flook with that particular drive, which is extremely obscure and almost no documentation exists.