HP Gen8 intelligent drive trays - works with other drives?

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GuybrushThreepwood

Member
Aug 2, 2015
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Was just wondering if anyone with HP DL/ML/SL servers Gen8 with the original intelligent drive trays that have the LED animation can advise if the trays can work with non-HP part numbered drives?

I intend to put in some Intel/HGST SSDs that are very popular in this forum and figure if these would work with 3rd party drives then it'll be nicer eye candy at the rack? Supposedly the intelligent drive trays have a chip, but I'm not sure how it communicates to the backplane.

Anyone can shed some light? Thanks in advance!
 
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tomaash

Active Member
Oct 11, 2016
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Europe, Slovakia
I have just ML310e Gen8 v2 with hotplug SAS backplane/drive cage, however with cheap chinese non-genuine trays that look totally same as genuine trays.

And it depends...

With SmartArray P222 (which is officially supported with ML310e), controller is not happy with non-HPE-Smart-Drives, only power leds work on trays (no fancy rotation), blue drive ID cannot be enabled and controller goes to warning state (complaining about non-genuine drives) which makes server health LED go amber-blink.

However with SmartArray P420 (which is officially not supported with ML310e, but works anyway...) everything works like a charm with all fancy disco lights.

So I would say you never know until you try :) Also I would imagine this works just with HPE HBAs and controllers.
Worst thing is getting health status going amber if your controller doen't like non-HPE drives.
 
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