HP ProLiant DL380e Gen8

[kevinm79]

Hi All

 

So far for the last few years I have been running a hp n54l without any issues. However as my needs has grown the N54L is starting to show its age. So its time to move on. One of my main issues is as I have an extra 4 drives connected to the Esata is speed. My write speed sucks and the cpu at times tops out.

 

So the plan is below and my reasoning behind it. But if anyone has any better ideas or a reason it will not work please let me know.

 

So going to pick up a HP DL380e with space for 14 drives and a hp H220 as this can it seems be flashed to IT mode. It also does have a HP Smart Array B120i SATA Controller on board but I have not read much into that yet. 

The reason for going for a HP card is I have read a few places that with other cards the server likes to run the fans at 100%. 

 

The only thing I have noticed is it says the H220 has a 42tb limit Im guessing this is if you use the card as intended or it was just the drives available at the time?

 

Thoughts?

[zacburgess]

Hi

How did u get on with the h220 card?

I have got a hp Proliant Dl380E g8 and a h240 which I can not get working.

Did you have to do anything to get up and running?



Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

[1812]

1 hour ago, zacburgess said:

Hi

How did u get on with the h220 card?

I have got a hp Proliant Dl380E g8 and a h240 which I can not get working.

Did you have to do anything to get up and running?



Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk
 

I've used h220 cards for years and they have no issues. Running 2 right now.

[sota]

I've got mine working great, minus the lack of drive temperature readings.

 

The onboard B120i controller is all but useless given it's connectivity and speed limitations.

 

Edited January 9, 2020 by sota

[zacburgess]

54 minutes ago, sota said:

I've got mine working great, minus the lack of drive temperature readings.

 

The onboard B120i controller is all but useless given it's connectivity and speed limitations.

 

I have took the h240 out. rebooted into the bios and disabled the onboard raid controller.

 

Shut down and put the h240 back in.

 

Rebooted into unraid and I can only see one drive. But the drive is made up of 4 600GB drives 2.4TB. see picture.

 

Think I am getting half way

 

Edited January 9, 2020 by zacburgess
Edit

[sota]

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/51789-hp-h240-smart-hba-support-in-hba-mode/page/2/
think I'll stuff that in my sig.

 

edit: that's not a useful link.

https://community.hpe.com/t5/ProLiant-Servers-ML-DL-SL/Gen9-H240-Set-HBA-Mode-for-Tape/td-p/6732871

 

Edited January 9, 2020 by sota

[Aurial]

Sorry to resurrect this old thread yet again, just looking for some advice/feedback on the H220.

 

I've recently picked up an HP DL380p G8 and am looking to move my Unraid setup over to it from a Dell R510 it's currently running on. I've setup a new USB drive with a trial copy of unraid to make sure everything is working properly before I pull my USB and drives from my Dell and move them across.

 

My DL380p has an embedded P420i card that I've successfully got running in HBA mode and passing the disks through to Unraid. The problem is that the P420i doesn't seem to report the drive temperatures to Unraid (not the end of the world) nor does the smart data seem to work properly. No smart data is displayed for the drives and if I press the buttons to perform a smart test nothing happens. This makes me worry that I won't be aware of a failing drive if and when that happens.

 

I've bought an HP H220 card and the very expensive cable to go with it, and fitted it today. I've come across two problems. The first is that there is a message displayed during boot that the H220 is detecting non-HP drives and may not be able to show the drive LED's for those drives, which it doesn't. Has anyone managed to get the LED's on the drive caddies to work at all with non-HP drives on this card? They work fine with the P420i. The second problem is that once I boot into Unraid it tells me that the disks are missing and lets me select which disk should be which. But unfortunately the names as different when presented to the H220 in that there is a whole load of extra characters at the end of the drive name. When I select the appropriate drive for each disk it tells me that it's wrong so I can't start the array up to test any further.

 

I'm pulling my hair out with this and I've done so much googling over the past couple of weeks to try and resolve these problems. I don't mind which card I end up going with, so long as I can get it working properly.

 

[JorgeB]

15 hours ago, Aurial said:

The second problem is that once I boot into Unraid it tells me that the disks are missing and lets me select which disk should be which. But unfortunately the names as different when presented to the H220 in that there is a whole load of extra characters at the end of the drive name. When I select the appropriate drive for each disk it tells me that it's wrong so I can't start the array up to test any further.

You'd need to do a new config, though if the RAID controller used non standard partitions Unraid will complain, usually that's not the case, and you can go back if needed.

[Aurial]

6 hours ago, JorgeB said:

You'd need to do a new config, though if the RAID controller used non standard partitions Unraid will complain, usually that's not the case, and you can go back if needed.

Thanks for your reply. 

 

So just to check my understanding (or lack thereof), if I move the drives across from my Dell and it complains about the drive names being 'wrong' I can just select 'New Config' and should be able to manually assign my drives to the array whilst keeping all the data on them? I'm guessing I'll probably have to rebuild the parity but that's not a problem. I've got about 30TB of data, about 20 dockers running and a couple of VM's and I'd just rather not have to start all over again.

 

And in case it helps anyone having similar problems to me with the P420i, I managed to get it to report the smart data by setting the smart controller type to SAT in disk settings. It still doesn't report the drive temperatures in the Unraid UI but so long as the smart data is working I can live with that.

[JorgeB]

19 hours ago, Aurial said:

I can just select 'New Config' and should be able to manually assign my drives to the array whilst keeping all the data on them?

Correct, use the original assignments.

 

19 hours ago, Aurial said:

I'm guessing I'll probably have to rebuild the parity

No need if the above is true, just check "parity is already valid" before first array start.