You experiences with HP SAS Expander 12GB/s

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minimini

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Sep 9, 2016
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I have few of these exapnders:

HPE 12G SAS Expander Card (QuickSpecs/c04346272.pdf)

And they are not so cooperative (expander dropouts for a second every 10-30 seconds) with IBM and/or LSI 12GB/s RAID controllers. Expander seems to work better if speed is manually lowered to 6GB/s and raised back to 12GB/s thru MSM, and then things start to work as they should. Expander and controllers are on the most recent firmwares I found.

(( However, expander behaves properly with 6 GB/s HBAs (but in that case speed is negotiated immediately to 6GB/s so I don't know if this proves anything))

Can you guys share your experiences with this Expander here, I'd like to know which problems you have, and how you solve them.... I am bit lost about what's wrong.

PS: I didn't see appropriate thread for this topic, so I created one, sorry if this was inappropriate, admins feel free to move/merge if necessary.
 
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aron

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Jul 19, 2017
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i have one connected with 2 cables to a LSI 9361-8i, driving 11 HDDs and 4 SDDs. Have had no problem and been working flawlessly.

Maybe you could try other cables?
 
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minimini

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Sep 9, 2016
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@Evan @aron - guys please send me links / photos / anything and where you bought cables.... I tried many cables, all cause problems.

Are they some special 12G cables (do they have 12G tag), coz my don't.... I will attach my photos later.

I am glad that expander works for you, because these were quite expensive, and controllers I tried 4 different so can't be that each controller is messed up. it must be something with cables....
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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That’s the thing, by convention the sockets used are normally for 6G and there is a different socket used for 12G generally but HPE use the same sockets for both.
The cables I have are genuine HP (3M manufactured I think) they don’t say anything special that I am aware but will look tomorrow.
 

AxNet

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Dec 4, 2016
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This is good topic, can you guys send some photos of your setups


PS - if it helps -
I read on overclock forums people have issues with HPE Sas expanders; also there are nice articles on serverfault how to flash them without having HPE Smart Array. If anyone interested it's here:

This topic is for old version of Expander (be carefull 6G Expander):
How to upgrade the firmware of HP SAS expander card without Smart Array controller or Proliant Server?

but flashing new version (12G expander) you follow identical procedure, you just need to find correct RPM package and using 7zip unpack and find fw or rom file and flash it just as described above. Be sure you are downloading firmware of new expander, here is where I got recent package
https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/swd/pu...=MTX_f466f6527f0e43f79fcf895dea&swEnvOid=4176
 
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AxNet

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Dec 4, 2016
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Zero issues with HPE cables at 12G speeds.
Hi Evan, you can't be using genuine HP cables with LSI 9361-81 (12G) controller since HP's connectors are different (not HD). Which controller do you have hooked up on your HPE 12G Expander ?

PS: 4.02 firmware is available.
 

minimini

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Sep 9, 2016
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i have one connected with 2 cables to a LSI 9361-8i, driving 11 HDDs and 4 SDDs. Have had no problem and been working flawlessly.

Maybe you could try other cables?
Zero issues with HPE cables at 12G speeds.
Hi @aron, @Evan, can you guys check firmware and bios version of both cards, 9361 and HP Expander. I noticed when I flash 9361 with newest firmware things go out of control, the expander keeps disappearing in MSM. This could mean your setup works because you have some specific firmwares and I'd like to know which ones.

Just to show what am I facing (PD 19 is ID of the expander; so to me it's link between them that's failing.):

ID = 167
SEQUENCE NUMBER = 8647
TIME = 24-02-2018 19:05:18
LOCALIZED MESSAGE = Controller ID: 0 Communication restored on enclosure: 1

ID = 187
SEQUENCE NUMBER = 8646
TIME = 24-02-2018 19:03:25
LOCALIZED MESSAGE = Controller ID: 0 Hardware error on enclosure: 1

ID = 113
SEQUENCE NUMBER = 8645
TIME = 24-02-2018 19:03:25
LOCALIZED MESSAGE = Controller ID: 0 Unexpected sense: PD = 19No addtional sense information, CDB = 0x1d 0x10 0x00 0x01 0x30 0x00 , Sense = 0x70 0x00 0x04 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x0a 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
 
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