HP/PMC SA in whitebox

[koisama]

I spent a good amount of time trying to boot from a drive connected to H240 in HBA mode. No luck.

Server in question is Supermicro X9DRi-F in CSE846 with an expander backplane. Getting into card bios turned out to be impossible. If oprom is enabled, initialization errors out with the usual "Found 0 logical drives" message. Updating firmware from 6.60 to 7.00, switching around legacy and uefi boot modes, clearing configuration and putting it into raid mode and back to hba did not help. It's worth mentioning that ssacli reports incorrect physical drive information - I get the correct number of entries, but data in all of them is the same. It changes when I pull the drive which data is displayed.
The real dealbreaker for me is the lack of hotplug - drives are only detected on boot.

Meanwhile it just works in dl380g6.

 

[lte]

Wanted to quickly add my experinces with Gen8+ Adapters:
Independant of their actual performance, the HP/HPE adapters are usually my first choice for a local RAID1 ESXi datastore, as they are still (in case of the P420) on the HCL and considerably cheaper than the alternative LSI3108 controllers.

P420:
Work generally well in Supermicro systems, but not servers of different OEMs. Required BIOS boot to get the SSA live image working

H240:
Works well within Supermicro and other OEM systems (worked in both Lenovo and Dell Servers for me), however I only use it as datastore, not to provide a bootable vdisk. Largest downside: card requires a PCIe x4 slot, card refuses to initlize with an electrical PCIe x1

E208i-p:
Currently my go to RAID1 adapter, works in both UEFI and BIOS mode throughout SuperMicro and OEM systems, also works from a PCIe x1 slot. Guess the result of the increased interoperability efforts of Microsemi

 

[Whaaat]

H240:
Largest downside: card requires a PCIe x4 slot, card refuses to initlize with an electrical PCIe x1

You are wrong, this card works perfectly in PCIe x1, I often use H240 in HBA mode to reformat various 528-byte per sector drives, and the card is plugged into the PCIe x1 via flexible riser

 

[lte]

flexible riser

I assume the one you got has supplemental power (i.e. gets a 4pin molex or something) ?
I tried it in an electrical x1 physical x8 and the card did not come up

 

[Whaaat]

I assume the one you got has supplemental power (i.e. gets a 4pin molex or something) ?

No, it simply connects all the pins of the connector without any additives, consumer boards rarely have open ended x1 slots

 

[lte]

Any chance your x1 slot is PCIe 3.0 ? The one i tried it with was a 2.0

 

[lizardking009]

Anyone put a HPE Smart Array P408i-a/p in a Gen9? I'm wondering if I can swap out my p440ar in my DL360 g9.

 

[leon_pro]

Largest downside: card requires a PCIe x4 slot, card refuses to initlize with an electrical PCIe x1

Some motherboards do not detect cards if PRSNT Pci-e pin(s) not configured for x1 link.
As I remember, if PRSNT#1 and PRSNT#2 pins are connected then card should be detected in Pci-e x1.
See Pci-e pinout.

 

[toddbailey]

I have a hp z840 workstation, when i plug in a hp sa-p822 array controller the pc wont boot to os or from a optical disk. Any ideas

 

[Patriot]

I have a hp z840 workstation, when i plug in a hp sa-p822 array controller the pc wont boot to os or from a optical disk. Any ideas

Does the controller work in any other box?

 

[rsumperl]

I’m using the P840 on an Intel S2600STBR server board, no issues.
I have also used the Dell H740P and H750P with no issues.