HP H240 HBA not seeing Dell 6TDVN SAS Expander, help?

[Neutrinos]

Hi there! I'm a newb so I am sorry if anything I say is terribly wrong; but here's the situation.

I have an HP H240 HBA, in HBA mode, connected to my computer. 5900X, X570, Windows 10 Enterprise. It and all drives connected directly to it show up in Windows just fine. Plug and play and ready to go. HP's Smart Storage Administrator also sees it just fine and can configure it just fine.

What I'm trying to do is connect a Dell 6TDVN SAS Expander to that HP HBA. I made the correct power cable for the Dell card, and triple checked all of it's connections to make sure I have the 5v and 12v going to the right pins. An indicator light comes on on the Dell card just fine, and it's heatsink gets a little warm. I have two SFF-8087 to SAS SFF-8088 cables going from the two ports on the HP card to two of the 3 ports on the Dell card. I am using the same SFF-8088 cables that work on the HP card, on the Dell card to connect the drives, so I know the cables going to the drives work. I've tried rearranging the SFF-8088 to SFF-8087 cables every which way to try to get the Dell card and it's drives to be recognized, but no combination of ports and cables seem to work. I've also tried switching the HP card from RAID and back to HBA mode and I've set it's power mode to Performance within SSA.

The only message that I get in HP SSA, when I have the Dell plugged into it, is an alert message, not an error, that says:

"There are no configurable physical drives attached to the current controller.

If this controller is being used as a host controller for tape devices only, please disregard this warning.

If this controller is being used as a host controller for an external controller, the physical drives attached to the external controller will only be visible by selecting the external controller.

If the controller is not being used as a host controller, one of the following could cause the problem: There are no supported drives attached to the controller.
A data cable has a bad connection.
Two or more drives have duplicate SCSI IDs.
Power to the external drives is off.
The OS controller driver is missing."

I'm just not sure what troubleshooting to do from here. Is there a Linux environment I should boot into to see if it recognizes anything? Or any other software ideas you can think of? Or does it just sound like the Expander is borked?

 

[bonox]

have you seen this

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/dell-6tdvn-sas-expander.22973/

 

[Neutrinos]

Hmm. My first thought is that the power is not going to the expander. Can you confirm you triple-checked the connection? You mentioned you made the cable. Did you follow a guide, or used a standard PSU 4 pin connection from the PSU?

Just double checked again. I used the pinout references from the link that Bonox posted, made sure I had the 5v from the Molex 8981 end going to Pin 4 of the EPS12v-like connector, and 12V going to Pin 3. A little indicator light is steady on, on the Expander board, so I know it is at least doing something with the power going into it. Argh, wonder what is going on in that little brain of its that is holding everything up.

have you seen this

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/dell-6tdvn-sas-expander.22973/

Yep, that's the post I used to decide to buy the Dell card! Seemed like an easy and cheap way to get a ton of drives going, but maybe not

 

[bonox]

You and I read that thread very differently I think. I read it as "if I follow the path another brave soul took, I might get lucky and get something that works"

I think you read it as a foregone conclusion that it will work. It's possible that your board is broken. It's possible that it's a different revision to the ones being played with by others. Possible it's your H240 and not the expander that's the issue. It's possible a previous owner before you put the 12V second pin across somewhere he shouldn't and didn't quite let enough smoke out to convince the next buyer that it's not a going concern.

You're also mixing HP and Dell gear, and while it works most of the time, they've been known to fiddle with pinouts before and I can't find any reference in that thread to the successes using an HP controller - they're all using generic LSI HBA controllers to interface with the LSI expander chip on the dell board. That H240 might advertise an HBA mode, but it's still a raid/IR controller which is different to what those who had success with the expander are using. Just a data point..... Good luck with further experimentation.

 

[Neutrinos]

You and I read that thread very differently I think. I read it as "if I follow the path another brave soul took, I might get lucky and get something that works"

I think you read it as a foregone conclusion that it will work. It's possible that your board is broken. It's possible that it's a different revision to the ones being played with by others. Possible it's your H240 and not the expander that's the issue. It's possible a previous owner before you put the 12V second pin across somewhere he shouldn't and didn't quite let enough smoke out to convince the next buyer that it's not a going concern.

You're also mixing HP and Dell gear, and while it works most of the time, they've been known to fiddle with pinouts before and I can't find any reference in that thread to the successes using an HP controller - they're all using generic LSI HBA controllers to interface with the LSI expander chip on the dell board. That H240 might advertise an HBA mode, but it's still a raid/IR controller which is different to what those who had success with the expander are using. Just a data point..... Good luck with further experimentation.

Like I said, I'm a newb at all of this But I can see how it is a bit much to expect this enterprise hardware to just magically work the first go-round in a non-validated setup.

Hmm, yeah I suspect that particular board got fried from someone messing with it before, as from the thread Bonox linked, it should work. I think if you can get a second one cheap, to try again, but at the same time, its a gamble.

I hadnt even known about the thread when I asked about the cable, as my first instinct was to say it must be the power. If you arent seeing your drives, thats the most likely thing I think.

I'm thinking maybe it was fried by the previous owner. I don't see any obvious signs of electrical damage, but I suspect if I spent enough time with a multimeter I'd find something. Of course now the question is, do I buy another one of these Dell expanders, try a different expander, or try a different HBA? I do know that at least the HBA works and reads 8 drives just fine. I might try an HP expander. Or maybe try getting the Dell from a non-ebay source