HP DL180 G6 2U LGA1366 storage server

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
Starting a thread on the HP DL180 G6 server. For those wondering - it is a 2U server that takes up to two LGA1366 Intel Xeon 5500 or 5600 series CPUs. dba found these servers and a deal where I purchased mine for around $500 with 2x Intel Xeon L5630 CPUs 2x 2GB DDR3 DIMMs, an a HP P410 RAID controller with 256MB of RAM.

Here's an ebay search I'm using for finding low cost HP DL180 G6 units

Photos

Internal HP DL180 G6 View with HP P410




Top view




ILO 100 Default Username and Password

Still looking for this one. Mine did not work with Administrator / Administrator or Operator / Operator. The system also did not come with a cardboard insert with the default password.

Note: My unit also did not show up with DHCP name and serial number as the server name. I did lookup an IP address for the mac address of d8:d3:85 and that showed up as an HP block which led me to the iLO web interface.

Storage configuration
12x front 3.5" drives fed via a backplane with a SAS expander. The SAS expander is connected with a SFF-8087 cable.
2x rear 3.5" drives fed via 2x 7-pin SAS/ SATA connectors. These are fed by the SAS expander PCB by default but one can easily connect a short SATA cable directly to the motherboard.

Power Consumption
2x Intel Xeon L5630
1x Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD
6x Kingston 8GB RDIMMs
Latest BIOS/ firmware as of 5/8/2013
Idle Power Consumption Ubuntu 12.04: 77w
Max Power Consumption Ubuntu 12.04: 165w observed thus far

More to come
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
1,244
52
48
Is this a dl180 or a SE1220? the SE1220 is the P4300 G2 - it is a special storageworks motherboard with a dedicated ilo port (not LO!) and has intel nic's instead of the crappy broadcom nic's.

With the cost of 10GB CNA's down to $75 (OCE10202, QLOGIC 8152, BROCADE 1020) you can do some serious damage with 2 if there is enough bandwidth. So far the only odd thing is the qlogic run a pci-e 2.0 4x only or pci-e 1.0 8x - kinda odd since they are x8 but probably due to the older generation nic.

Basically 3rd gen old are missing SR-IOV (OCE102020,QLogic 8152, Brocade 1020) - the emulex takes a standard hp/tyco DAC and speaks to the qlogic 8152 fine once you flash the firmware, the qlogic won't take the dac until its flashed up. The Brocade 1020 is a great card too but missing the SR-IOV.

The more expensive ($100-200) older generation cards like the BROCADE 18xx series 16gbps FC/10gbps ethernet or Emulex OCE11102 can do SR-IOV which is nic, plus they all do port expansion and DCB. Though the advanced features require DCB switches, you can drop back to VLAN tagging for non-dcb and even drop back to 1 nic 1 port mode. ISCSI and FCoE require DCB for hardware offload with the right switch and right san on the right thursday night [aka skip it].

SR-IOV is a killer must have feature for ESXi users and some of these nic's even support vswitch on ASIC so you don't send data out the nic and back in :)

These would be killer servers if they have enough pci-express to handle it. X4 pci-e 2.0 for 10gbe sounds like you might be choking a dual port rig though.

what's the slot layout? Any optional second riser? I'd think you want x8 for raid, x8 for nick and x8 for nic2 but that doesn't leave much left over for the internal junk.

Is the P410 a card or is it built on motherboard like the dl360?
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
3,184
1,545
113
I ordered one of the BTO models. Should have arrived today but I'm traveling. Interesting thing is I offered a lowball price on drive trays and they accepted. Basically got the trays for ~$2 each.

Really looking forward to setting this up. Going to work out much better than the C6100 for a disk intensive server. A little nervous about how the expander will perform, but if its a similar design to the HP expander boards it should be ok for SATA spinny disks.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
Is this a dl180 or a SE1220? the SE1220 is the P4300 G2 - it is a special storageworks motherboard with a dedicated ilo port (not LO!) and has intel nic's instead of the crappy broadcom nic's.

SR-IOV is a killer must have feature for ESXi users and some of these nic's even support vswitch on ASIC so you don't send data out the nic and back in :)


what's the slot layout? Any optional second riser? I'd think you want x8 for raid, x8 for nick and x8 for nic2 but that doesn't leave much left over for the internal junk.

Is the P410 a card or is it built on motherboard like the dl360?
Very interesting. So it looks like there are Intel NICs but... of course... this thing is fighting me. I do see Intel PXE boot on the monitor though. Front of the chassis says HP DL180.

Slot configuration is 1x PCIe x16 slot.

The HP P410 is a separate card.

Also came with dual 460w power supplies.

Lowest I've gotten it to is 96w. Dual rows of fans do hurt the power consumption figures though.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
Confirmed - this is a DL100 series so it is Lights-Out 100 vs iLO. Going to flash BMC firmware tonight to hopefully allow me to get into the system.
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
3,184
1,545
113
I know it's DL100, not iLO, but see page 41-42 for info on the iLO security override switch. Should be the same on DL100. Petty much a 'clear CMOS' jumper function for the BMC.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
I know it's DL100, not iLO, but see page 41-42 for info on the iLO security override switch. Should be the same on DL100. Petty much a 'clear CMOS' jumper function for the BMC.
Did that... took the entire thing apart to do so to no avail. The default admin / admin login did not work.
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
3,184
1,545
113
was the F8 boot option for the RDSU disabled or set to require a password? If so you might be SOL.

Leaving NJ now. I'll be home early evening tonight and will pull mine out of the box and see what I get on the iLO. I'd be pretty disappointed without access to remote management. I've really gotten used to managing everything with a laptop from my Lazy Boy...
 
Last edited:

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
3,184
1,545
113
Well, no love trying it out tonight. Seems I managed to order a unit without PSUs - so now I'm on the hunt for HP power (silly me...ordered too fast :().

Also, noticed that the rear drive bays block out the rest of the PCIe. Without it, the DL180 G6 comes with a 3x PCIe x8 riser along with the PCIe x16. With the rear drive bay installed you can only access the PCIe x16. Won't work in an environment where I need (ok - want) a 10Gbe NIC too. So I guess I have some re-planning to do here.

Oh well...back to eBay.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
Ah ha! that makes a lot of sense. I saw the extra PCIe connector in there.

Still no Lights Out 100 luck. I even did a firmware redo today.

Ubuntu shows the network interfaces as em1 and em2. Intel 82576 based not broadcom. Updating firmware made noise more reasonable.
 

s0lid

Active Member
Feb 25, 2013
259
35
28
Tampere, Finland
From what I've seen the fans seem to be motherboard controlled.
What happens if you disconnect the fans? The server refuses to boot or will it just announce that some of the fans are faulty?

2U box with L5630 and 14 3.5" bays seem like interesting file box, especially when it costs mere 300e + shipping :p
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
Updated the BIOS which led to lower fan speeds. Down to 77w idle. Note: this is very dependent on ambient temps. Slightly higher ambient room temps yield higher fan speeds and power consumption.
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
3,184
1,545
113
I'm not entirely sure the second PCIe connector is a "standard" PCIe pinout. Its designed for a special riser card that presents 2x PCIe x8 and an optional PCIe x4. There also appears to be a different riser card that presents 3x PCI-X (not sure how they do that...).

In any case - I think we have a choice of removing the rear drive backplane or being limited to a single PCIe x16 which pretty much has to hold your HBA/Raid card.

Ordered PSUs last night (the 460w ones are dirt cheap on ebay ~$15). Also ordered a PCIe riser card.
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
3,184
1,545
113
OK - so I'm thinking maybe a PCIe 8x ribbon cable riser might be able to plug into the 2nd PCIe slot, run under the rear drive cage and come out behind it. I could fashion a ghetto-mod bracket to hold an M1015 and then use the normal PCIe slot for the 10Gbe card.

Now just have to find an x8 ribbon cable riser with a really low profile connector (has to fit under the drive cage - just a few mm to play with) and a long enough ribbon cable.

Also worth noting: the rear HDs in the cage are cabled back to the SAS expander on the drive backplane. They do not connect to the Motherboard SATA as I had expected they would. The power at the back of the rear drive backplane is a standard 4-pin Molex power connector. So, with a power splitter, you could also wire up to six SSDs connected to the Motherboard SATA and mount them along the inside edge of the chassis. Makes for an interesting approach to 14 LFF hard disks for ZFS, mirrored SSD for boot, SSD ZIL (if you need/want it), etc. I wouldn't bother with SSD L2ARC - just stuff the beast with RAM for that.
 

s0lid

Active Member
Feb 25, 2013
259
35
28
Tampere, Finland
Oh right since some of you own a C6100 too.
Does C6100 hdd caddy work with these servers?

Removed my caddies from my C6100 while back.
 

Toddh

Member
Jan 30, 2013
122
10
18
So it sounds like these may make a good little storage server.

The 12 hds units have 3x PCIe slots so you could put an Infiniband card and a good Raid card like an LSI 9271 connected to the SAS expander? The 14 drive versions only one 1 PCIe slot?

I am not familiar with ILO but it sounds like HPs version of IPMI?
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
3,184
1,545
113
So it sounds like these may make a good little storage server.

The 12 hds units have 3x PCIe slots so you could put an Infiniband card and a good Raid card like an LSI 9271 connected to the SAS expander? The 14 drive versions only one 1 PCIe slot?

I am not familiar with ILO but it sounds like HPs version of IPMI?
All correct.
 

dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
1,477
184
63
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
Yes: iLO = "integrated lights-out" management = the equivalent of the Supermicro, Dell, etc. web based management system.
I'm not sure about the particular version of iLO on these g6 machines, but later versions are crippled unless you buy an add-on key. The g7 servers, for example, offer web-based KVM, but without the key they will kick you off after the system boots. The free version will let you mess with BIOS settings remotely, but if you want to manage a running system then you need to pay. Fortunately, you can find gray-market iLO licenses on eBay for $40. Fortunately for us, the recent supreme court ruling clarifies that such gray-market sales of copyrighted good are legal.

...

I am not familiar with ILO but it sounds like HPs version of IPMI?
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
1,244
52
48
ilo4 is agentless - aka no crap drivers to load - plus you can watch all day (and reset) but if you want to use the keyboard you buy the key.

iirc back in the days to reset the ilo you had to prove you were in posession of the server, aka remove a CPU!!