Just bought a HP DL380e Gen8 - P420 in HBA mode not passing drive?


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Hey guys,

 

I actually hate starting off with a "help me" thread, but since this really is the beginning of my server endeavors I have WAY more need for help than I'd feel comfortable to provide.

 

Regardless, I just bought an HP DL380e G8 as the title says and I'm still waiting for the seller to adjust the invoice to account for the drive caddies I added along with the fillers to make it look neat at all times.

 

It comes equipped with a P420 (with a cache module but no super cap, doesn't matter though I guess) and whilst browsing this forum I've begun to wonder if the P series really is a good idea to put into IT mode for passing through the drives? I haven't read anything about the P420 on here though, so I thought I'd better ask if an HBA card really is needed.

 

Thank you so much in advance, everyone. I'm sure this won't be my last post, either for seeking help but also providing help once I feel confident enough to provide it. Otherwise I'm not really an IT novice, so that's something. :)

 

Edit: I have since received the machine and the card is set to HBA mode, the drive I inserted shows up in HP's Smart Array manager tool and also in unRAID's SCSI devices section, not in the array config though, so no way to add storage atm. Driver issue?

Edited by Glassed Silver
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bumping this thread.

 

I want to add that I successfully put the P420 in HBA mode, however whilst the WD drive I put in there shows up in the card's BIOS/Smart Array Manager tool and also in unRAID's SCSI devices section I cannot select it in the array.

 

I have a separate issue with this machine as well, will post a second thread for structural reasons. (and yes, I googled a LOT and checked several other places for help, no luck)

 

Edit: Link to my other issue's thread.

Edited by Glassed Silver
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24 minutes ago, 1812 said:

you're probably going to have to get an hba card. unraid doesn't play well with onboard hp P4xx raid controllers in my experience, regardless of mode.

I have suspected it might lead to this, since information on Pxxx cards is few and far between and the little there is it's never really about P420s or very fruitful. At the end of the day I'd much prefer running a card that's designed to treat my data the way the OS exoects it to be treated, although I cannot lie, I would have loved for someone to come in and say something similar to "there is a specific firmware that you can flash that will solve all your problems".

 

Either way, which HBA would you recommend?

My requirements/wishes are as follows:

1) Has to support drives with very high capacities. I would love to slam in whatever is a good TB/€ deal. 8TB MyBooks, 10TB eventually and who knows what might come. SSD caching would be lovely as well.

2) eventually I'd love to attach a DAS so I can expand beyond the 14 bays provided by the chassis. More = better obviously, but I realize that if a small DAS is the only way to go I might be okay with that as well, since the server might one day become a FreeNAS ZFS pool machine for other needs moving to something else for unRAID. Would be a while though.

 

Thank you so much for your input, I noticed you do a lot of ProLiant help on here, gives me some hope and reassurance because until now this endeavor felt more like reaching for something that requires more experience that I simply lack and the communities I came to didn't provide. I had begun questioning the whole build, but I won't give up that easily!

 

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1 hour ago, Glassed Silver said:

I have suspected it might lead to this, since information on Pxxx cards is few and far between and the little there is it's never really about P420s or very fruitful. At the end of the day I'd much prefer running a card that's designed to treat my data the way the OS exoects it to be treated, although I cannot lie, I would have loved for someone to come in and say something similar to "there is a specific firmware that you can flash that will solve all your problems".

 

Either way, which HBA would you recommend?

My requirements/wishes are as follows:

1) Has to support drives with very high capacities. I would love to slam in whatever is a good TB/€ deal. 8TB MyBooks, 10TB eventually and who knows what might come. SSD caching would be lovely as well.

2) eventually I'd love to attach a DAS so I can expand beyond the 14 bays provided by the chassis. More = better obviously, but I realize that if a small DAS is the only way to go I might be okay with that as well, since the server might one day become a FreeNAS ZFS pool machine for other needs moving to something else for unRAID. Would be a while though.

 

Thank you so much for your input, I noticed you do a lot of ProLiant help on here, gives me some hope and reassurance because until now this endeavor felt more like reaching for something that requires more experience that I simply lack and the communities I came to didn't provide. I had begun questioning the whole build, but I won't give up that easily!

 

I use a few h220 in a couple servers, which is an lsi card essentially. A couple lsi branded model cards are popular in here and can be found by googling “unRaid hba recommendation” (don’t use the forum search, it’s junk) but I can’t recall them off the top of my head.

 

proliants can be finicky, but also great workhorses. 

 

 

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10 hours ago, 1812 said:

I use a few h220 in a couple servers, which is an lsi card essentially. A couple lsi branded model cards are popular in here and can be found by googling “unRaid hba recommendation” (don’t use the forum search, it’s junk) but I can’t recall them off the top of my head.

 

proliants can be finicky, but also great workhorses. 

 

 

Any thoughts on the massively cheaper offers from Chinese sellers on eBay?

 

It's a pretty wide gap between 33-40-ish € CN offers to 79€ and up from domestic sellers, more than I'm used to from Chinese exported tech by Western companies.

 

It's not like I don't have a sneaking suspicion one way or another, but I don't want to blindly build junk or hardware that may be legit/clean but give me problems in operation.

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4 hours ago, Glassed Silver said:

Any thoughts on the massively cheaper offers from Chinese sellers on eBay?

 

I never buy from Chinese sellers. by the time you get it and find out it's junk, you could be beyond the return window. and now you own junk. but your mileage may vary.

 

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16 minutes ago, 1812 said:

I never buy from Chinese sellers. by the time you get it and find out it's junk, you could be beyond the return window. and now you own junk. but your mileage may vary.

 

Well if it is junk I'd still have Paypal/eBay buyer protection on my side.

 

Might go for a renowned German seller though, putting this on the back burner for now though, because I will be plenty busy next week anyways.

 

I'll try to get the fan issue resolved this week for now and maybe dabble with other things for now.

 

I guess for connecting the external DAS I'd plug the cable into an internal slot then and route it through a gap somewhere? Wouldn't that interfere with fan control since the machine will think it's an internal array of disks? Or is the backplane of the DAS read for that info rather than blindly assuming the connectors define everything?

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5 minutes ago, Glassed Silver said:

Well if it is junk I'd still have Paypal/eBay buyer protection on my side.

 

Might go for a renowned German seller though, putting this on the back burner for now though, because I will be plenty busy next week anyways.

 

I'll try to get the fan issue resolved this week for now and maybe dabble with other things for now.

 

I guess for connecting the external DAS I'd plug the cable into an internal slot then and route it through a gap somewhere? Wouldn't that interfere with fan control since the machine will think it's an internal array of disks? Or is the backplane of the DAS read for that info rather than blindly assuming the connectors define everything?

You can use and 8087 to 8088 adapter for external connections or an intel or hp sas expansion card with an output. Either way it doesn’t affect fan speed, server doesn’t care in my experience.

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1 hour ago, 1812 said:

You can use and 8087 to 8088 adapter for external connections or an intel or hp sas expansion card with an output. Either way it doesn’t affect fan speed, server doesn’t care in my experience.

Hmm, just noticed... The back plane is connected using two connectors. This is a bit of a problem isn't it? The H220 only has two ports, so in the end I'd need two H220s, no? Sounds like a lot of heat...

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2 hours ago, Glassed Silver said:

Hmm, just noticed... The back plane is connected using two connectors. This is a bit of a problem isn't it? The H220 only has two ports, so in the end I'd need two H220s, no? Sounds like a lot of heat...

You use an sas expander as mentioned before with one hba

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