Is the HP P822 RAID controller any good?

[Ed.]

I am starting to upgrade my PC to get a better RAID setup and as these P822 RAID controller cards with 2GB FBWC cache and battery, new (unused) are less than Au$100 delivered (E-Bay) , I am contemplating getting one.

My system currently is:
ASUS P9X79E-WS (UEFI BIOS)
16GB RAM
4x 320GB Seagate SATA +1 global spare in a RAID5 connected to a LSI 9267-8i 512mb RAM RAID card
(MegaRAID software)
WD 1TB SATA
256GB SSD Samsung 860 EVO (boot disk) with Server 2016 OS
LTO-4 SCSI External tape + Adaptec 29320LPE SCSI card.
All the 320GB SATA drives are all SATA2 and very old.

I have just bought 6x 2TB Ultrastar SAS 6Gbps drives and was thinking of connecting them to the HP P822 card, whilst that card is only 6Gbps as is the other LSI card I have, I am unlikely to get any faster HDD's for a long while, so going to a 12Gbps card, whilst it may be nice, it will not really be of any benefit but at a lot more bucks!

So my question is, is the P822 a reasonable card or does it have problems in a non HP hardware box and peripherals or is there any other brand/model I should look at. It seems to have a "non standard" RAID chip in it (Sierra SRCv 8x6G SAS RAID-on-chip).

Prefer not to spend more than AU$100 unless there is a compelling reason to do so.
These seem to be the best bang for buck cards that I have found for the price with 8i and 16e ports which I assume are expander ports? just not sure of compatibility.

Looking for opinions/suggestions from those who have them or have tried them.

 

[BeTeP]

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/hp-pmc-sa-in-whitebox.4732/
https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/hp-p420-in-whitebox-server.4548/

 

[Ed.]

Thanks BeToP for the links, the second didn't have much value in regards to the P822 but from the first link it seems that it could be a hit or miss affair with it. So long as it doesn't continually hang on UEFI BIOS boot up it should be OK as I will be setting up the array under the Server 2016 OS after it boots from the SSD. I have ordered one today and in about a month or so (when all the parts arrive) will configure it in my system and see how it goes. I will do an update later on in case anyone else in interested after I get it going....or not!

 

[BeTeP]

The reason for the second link is that P420 behaves very similar to P822 in regards to being installed in non HP servers.

Other than that P822 has an outstanding performance for the price. In the past it alone has been enough reason for me to pick a compatible HP server instead of other options.

 

[zer0sum]

You might be interested in the IBM M1215 as it can be found under US$100 and is a SAS3 12Gbps card can be very easily flashed

 

[Ed.]

Thanks for your replies guys, I did consider the IBM1215, but by the time you factor in the US$ conversion, plus delivery and the 10%GST charge on the total, it would have been almost double what the P822 cost but the biggest disadvantage for me with the IBM M1215 cards that I found is that that you had to buy an optional upgrade to get the RAID 5 that I want to use, as it it doesn't come standard on that card.

This is assuming I can get the P822 to work in my system, and whilst 12Gb may be nice, at this stage I will not be going to get faster drives so probably no point in getting a faster card, and if I can't get it to work then it's back to the drawing board looking at specs again! Realistically I can use my current card (LSI 9267-8I) but I am not overly fond of the 512MB cache that one has so wanted one with a bigger cache but it had to do RAID 5.

At one stage a while ago, I picked up several HP servers, but I quickly got rid off them, couldn't stand the noise that their fans made, not ideal in a small quiet room in a house.

 

[Ed.]

Just an update, I installed the card and Server 2016 recognized it as well as the BIOS when the system booted up. I could not get into it from the BIOS though. I ran the HP software and it found the 6 x SAS HGST 2GB Hard drives connected to it but from then it developed problems, it worked up to the point where I setup a new Virtual drive but then it would not initialize the RAID 5 I was trying to setup. Ran the diagnostics and it kept saying the it was in an unrecognized slot so after a few PCI-E slot swaps I was going nowhere.

I got hold of the latest firmware and when I tried to upgrade it, it failed and the message I received was that there was a hardware item missing so I can only surmise that there is some sort of hardware that is only on the HP motherboards that it needs to complete the processes.

This is a bit strange as I also installed a HP H241 12gb SAS card to connect my external SAS HP LTO-5 drive that I just bought, and that one works fine. So it could be a dud card but I am thinking it is an incompatibility with my ASUS M/board.

Any thoughts anyone?

 

[Ed.]

Success at last, after many attempts I managed to finally get the correct firmware from the HP site for the P822 card and it upgraded, and also now works in my system, it managed to initialize a pair of SATA drives and also a set of 5 x 2GB SAS drives which are now set as a RAID 5 with a spare disk. I can't get to the card via the BIOS bootup but only through Windows. But still it works so I am happy!

 

[phreich]

Success at last, after many attempts I managed to finally get the correct firmware from the HP site for the P822 card and it upgraded, and also now works in my system, it managed to initialize a pair of SATA drives and also a set of 5 x 2GB SAS drives which are now set as a RAID 5 with a spare disk. I can't get to the card via the BIOS bootup but only through Windows. But still it works so I am happy!

To @Ed.
What version of the firmware did you have success running? You just mentioned it as "the correct firmware", but didn't post the actual version.
Thanks,
Philip

 

[Ed.]

Hi Philip, can't tell you exactly as it was quite a while ago (2019) and I recently bought a new PC including 5 x 6TB drives drives and 9362-8I RAID card. Having said that I will have a look to see if I kept a copy of the firmware on my current drives.

 

[Ed.]

Hi, just checked and it is not there, the old computer is in bits so unfortunately I can't boot it up to check what version it is. I will be running it the next couple of weeks as I have to scrub the drives to sell off the bits and pieces so if I do find the version number, I will send you a message letting you know. I may be able to tell you what version number it is, but not where I got the firmware from as I did copy all my files on to my current RAID and it isn't there.

I take it that you have a similar problem? If you can't resolve your issue have a look at the LSI 9362-8i it works fine in my new setup (MSI X670E Ace) but the only thing I don't like about it is that it only has 1GB cache on it, I was going to try and get the HP P840 which has the 4GB cache till I tried to get the cables to attach the drives to it. HP uses 2 x extra wide cables which are designed to go to a cage or backplane and not directly to the drives. Even getting a part number for it took many weeks of research and then to find an alternate cable to go direct to the drives was next to impossible so I gave up in the end. So I bought the LSI one instead. Both were similarly priced (E-Bay) about the $100 mark except for the cables which I could not find.

 

[phreich]

Hi, just checked and it is not there, the old computer is in bits so unfortunately I can't boot it up to check what version it is. I will be running it the next couple of weeks as I have to scrub the drives to sell off the bits and pieces so if I do find the version number, I will send you a message letting you know. I may be able to tell you what version number it is, but not where I got the firmware from as I did copy all my files on to my current RAID and it isn't there.

I take it that you have a similar problem? If you can't resolve your issue have a look at the LSI 9362-8i it works fine in my new setup (MSI X670E Ace) but the only thing I don't like about it is that it only has 1GB cache on it, I was going to try and get the HP P840 which has the 4GB cache till I tried to get the cables to attach the drives to it. HP uses 2 x extra wide cables which are designed to go to a cage or backplane and not directly to the drives. Even getting a part number for it took many weeks of research and then to find an alternate cable to go direct to the drives was next to impossible so I gave up in the end. So I bought the LSI one instead. Both were similarly priced (E-Bay) about the $100 mark except for the cables which I could not find.

@Ed. I read your post and am about to try to install a p822 controller in my z460 workstation, replacing an aging p812 controller that runs very hot, and limits sata to 3mb/s. I just wanted to leverage off of your experience proactively so I didn't have to deal with issues. When you boot up that old system, maybe you can go into the HP utility and check on the firmware version there? If you do find you have the firmware, then if you could put it on a google drive and send me the link to it in a PM, that'll save some time trying to locate it.

The reason I am going with the HP instead of the LSI controllers is that the HP have both multiple internal and multiple external ports and have a large cache backed by a super-capacitor. The only reason I am upgrading from the p812 to the p822 is that the p812 runs super hot, is huge (it barely fits in the tower), and it limits the speed of attached sata drives to 3mb/s. I was hoping the p822 would also provide 4kn sas support, but it looks like it won't, since HP says only 9th gen hardware and later support 4kn. That's okay, as all my existing drives are 512e native format, and the p822 supports that.

Thanks for the help,
Philip

 

[Ed.]

Hi Philip, that P822 also ran hot, I ended up putting a fan on top of the PSU to blow air directly on to it to cool it down. Incidentally the new 9362-8I also runs hot. It had reached way past 85C so so I reseated the heat sink, replaced the thermal compound and screwed a small fan directly to the heat sink and now it runs at 47-50C. I have also bought a 50x50mm Copper heat sink for it and when I get some time I am going to replace the ally one on it. I think that all these cards run very hot.

Time is the one thing that I am in short supply of, got a gazzilion things that have to be done, hence it will take me a couple of weeks before I can get around to getting the old system up and running again as I used some parts from the old system to put in the new one.
The P822 was a good card with heaps of ports but it only ran at 6gbit as against the 12gbit that the 9362-8i runs at.

As I said before I don't think that I will have the actual firmware on the old RAID setup as I would have found it in my current raid but I should be able to find out the version number it has. I don't recall seeing any thing in the HP controller software that I was running that would have allowed me to get a backup of the firmware but I will have a look.

 

[Ed.]

Hi Philip, strangely enough one of the things I had to do today got cancelled so I managed to rebuild my old PC and found out that the version of firmware on my P822 is V8.32, but as I suspected, the firmware package that I used to update it to that version is not on that desktop's drives and the installed HP software did not have the provision to download/backup the firmware so unfortunately I can't help any further regarding that. I also should point out that as the motherboard in that desktop is not HP and is an ASUS P9X79-E WS, I could only get that P822 to work in PCI-E slot 3.

Having said all that, I had a quick look on the HP site and you may have some luck getting a more recent version than mine.

https://support.hpe.com/connect/s/product?language=en_US&kmpmoid=5249707&tab=driversAndSoftware

I did a search on the card that you have and if keeping it cool is your main problem then I would screw 1-2 small 40 or 50 x 10mm fans directly on to the heat sink, assuming you have the slot room and that should bring the temps down a lot.

As you have a HP desktop you might not have the same issues that I had trying to get mine to work. As I said, I preferred the P840 as it is a 12gbit card which can run 16 internal drives and has a bigger cache but if it wasn't for those damm cables! Also it depends if you need both internal and external HDD's, but if you are getting the P822 then I recommend you add a small fan to the heatsink as well as it will run very hot.
Hope it works out for you.

Cheers.
Ed.