HP/PMC SA in whitebox

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Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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I wanted to start a thread as a compilation of Servers/motherboards and cards tested
HP SA cards are very fast and stable but often have issues dealing with non-HP boards.
While this will change in the future with PMC licensing the SA brand this is the present we live in.

For those that have used HP cards in white boxes if you would list the configuration and any tweaks required to make it work.

I have a P222 running in an Asus Z9PE-D16/2L and it required turning off Option rom prompting in the bios. Otherwise it would hang on drive initialization.


Of note... for those that have not tried a SA card in a whitebox but would like to...
I have a few spare p420's that you can play with.

 

Mr. F

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Sep 5, 2011
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I'm running a P420/1GB with SuperCap in my Asrock E3c224-4L motherboard. It was plug and play, no motherboard or other configuration required besides installing the current HP drivers and SSA after installation.

Issues:
  • The SuperCap was not being recognized on firmware 6.0. Reverted to firmware 5.42 resolved it.
  • HP SSA can't see the temperature of the card and reports 0 degrees.
Other than that the card is running fine. It's extremely fast and stable using Toshiba DT01ACA300 3TB drives. Also ran SmartCache using a Samsung 830 SSD with no issues.
 
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Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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I'm running a P420/1GB with SuperCap in my Asrock E3c224-4L motherboard. It was plug and play, no motherboard or other configuration required besides installing the current HP drivers and SSA after installation.

Issues:
  • The SuperCap was not being recognized on firmware 6.0. Reverted to firmware 5.42 resolved it.
  • HP SSA can't see the temperature of the card and reports 0 degrees.
Other than that the card is running fine. It's extremely fast and stable using Toshiba DT01ACA300 3TB drives. Also ran SmartCache using a Samsung 830 SSD with no issues.
Were you able to use the option rom to configure the drives or did you have to use offline acu or hpssa at the OS side?
 

Mr. F

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Sep 5, 2011
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Were you able to use the option rom to configure the drives or did you have to use offline acu or hpssa at the OS side?
I didn't try the option ROM - I'm guessing it's disabled for that PCI slot in the BIOS because I didn't see the typical SA prompt to press a certain key for the option ROM. I configured my arrays with SSA inside of Windows Server.
 
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Patriot

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I didn't try the option ROM - I'm guessing it's disabled for that PCI slot in the BIOS because I didn't see the typical SA prompt to press a certain key for the option ROM. I configured my arrays with SSA inside of Windows Server.
That is normally what causes a hang on non-hp boards... so if by default the OpRom is ignored it will work.
 

Mr. F

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Sep 5, 2011
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That is normally what causes a hang on non-hp boards... so if by default the OpRom is ignored it will work.
I'll have to double check this and report back. I seem to remember the M5015 I had installed previously prompting me to enter the config utility every time.
 

scobar

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Nov 24, 2013
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Intel s2400sc2, needed to disable boot option rom and it is happy with a p212 or p420. With it enabled and on p212 it reboots as soon as it gets to "initializing drives". Not going to see if this is the case with p420.
 

Kżyho

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Feb 13, 2015
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I'm trying to use P400 in HP dc7800 SFF but as far as now no luck :/ It stops after initializing drives and nothing happens.
Tried with dc7700, but there is a reboot after initializing drives. No ideas what to do in both cases. Any help?
BIOS and firmware latest available.
 

Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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I'm trying to use P400 in HP dc7800 SFF but as far as now no luck :/ It stops after initializing drives and nothing happens.
Tried with dc7700, but there is a reboot after initializing drives. No ideas what to do in both cases. Any help?
BIOS and firmware latest available.
Same as all others, it has to be able to ignore the option rom on boot. If there is no setting in the bios, you wont get it to work.
 

Kżyho

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Feb 13, 2015
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There is only an option to switch off Option ROM Messages but it doesn't help.
My curiosity raised because of this post
The same thing was with dc7700 - someone posted somewhere on the internet, that he is using dc7700 with P400 and it runs OK.
But there are no details about BIOS, firmware and any tricks used to get it work :/
I PMed the author, but it was his the only activity on this forum so I doubt he answer.

And what about some tricks with blocking pins on PCI-E connector or something? Is there a chance for getting it to work in this way?
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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The PERC5i SMBUS pin trick might work! Google for the pics to show you what to block off. the P400 is ancient pci-e 1.0 and sata 1.5 for drives! Might want to move up to a P410/P420!
 

Kżyho

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Feb 13, 2015
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OK. Thank's for the link. I think I'll try to block pin 5 and 6 and we'll see :) I'll report.
 

Kżyho

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Feb 13, 2015
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The PERC5i SMBUS pin trick might work! Google for the pics to show you what to block off. the P400 is ancient pci-e 1.0 and sata 1.5 for drives! Might want to move up to a P410/P420!
So, I've tried P400 in HP dc7800 with pin 5 & 6 blocked. Unfortunately nothing positive happened. Still no clue how to force this to work :/
 

Patriot

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So, I've tried P400 in HP dc7800 with pin 5 & 6 blocked. Unfortunately nothing positive happened. Still no clue how to force this to work :/
Get a newer box? Still not sure why you are trying to throw a raid card in a box with so few hdd's.
 

Kżyho

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Feb 13, 2015
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First, this box I got for free. Second is that I don't want any more powerful machine because of power costs. This is only for elementary home-use. Third I don't need something bigger and more powerful. 3 disks will be enough. 1 for system (ESXi) and 2 disk in RAID1 for so called data. I also do not need SATA 3G or something, because 1,5G will be accurate for 2, standard SATA disks.

And ther is also 4th reason - I don't like to give up if someone else writes that it's working and mine not.
User Hardware wrote me back. His P400 is working fine with dc7800 but he has CMT version (mine is SFF), he had 1.24 BIOS (mine is 1.32) and 4.06 P400 firmware (mine was 6.86, now is latest 7.24).
 

mervincm

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Jun 18, 2014
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I can't find my notes on it, but I had issues using the p400 in white box servers w 7.x bios, I would not be recognized at boot. I had to back off the bios to an older version, and to do so, I had to back flash in a real HP server. It was solid, but slow and I have since moved onto cards that don't have so many limitations.
 
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Patriot

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I can't find my notes on it, but I had issues using the p400 in white box servers w 7.x bios, I would not be recognized at boot. I had to back off the bios to an older version, and to do so, I had to back flash in a real HP server. It was solid, but slow and I have since moved onto cards that don't have so many limitations.
I would try flashing to older firmwares... as they may have added hooks for ILO that were not there in the older versions.
 

Kżyho

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Feb 13, 2015
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A kind of suprise from today. I put my P400 into HP dc7900 SFF which has 2 long PCI-E slots. One is PCI-E x16 and P400 didn't work at all (no blinking LEDs). But the second has the same lenght but is described as PCIE4x on the mainbord, so I assume it is PCI-E x4. And... P400 in this slot works like a charm. Also some options in dc7900 BIOS appeared after that - P400 was present in Boot Order, there was an option do enable/disable "HP RAID Controller" in PCI Devices and the IRQ could be set for P400.
So my thesis is: you need PCI-E x4 slot for P400 to work in HP desktop. My dc7800 SFF unfortunately hasn't one (1x PCI-E x16, 2x PCI-E x1) :(