Expand HP Gen8 Server

[bigo93]

I have an HP G1610T Gen8 microserver with xpenology install on it.

But I want to add more than 4 drives.
I've seen someone expand their older HP Gen7 server with 2 others to form a 12 bay NAS
I want to do the same with my Gen8

But I've no idea about server hardware!

I have two Gen8 servers
I kinda jumped the gun ans bought a HP Smart Array P222 Controller card, but not sure if this if the thing I need to connect the second server to the first.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Windows7ge]

What you'd be looking for is a Disk Enclosure. I'll be finishing and posting a guide on how to do it yourself hopefully a little later today. May prove useful for you.

[bigo93]

Would it be compatible with my Gen8?
Also cost and space is an issue, otherwise I would buy an official Synology 12 bay server

[Windows7ge]

8 minutes ago, bigo93 said:

Would it be compatible with my Gen8?
Also cost and space is an issue, otherwise I would buy an official Synology 12 bay server

If the server can support an HBA or RAID card with rear SFF-8088 ports it will work with just about any server.

 

The best thing about the guide is that you can build one extremely cheaply.

[Windows7ge]

Maybe this will be useful to you:

 

[bigo93]

Argh!!!
Put everything together
Turned it on
And get continuous powering on and off.

Guessing there's something else wrong with my old motherboard.
Gone and ordered a £10 random board on ebay
Will test on that when I get it in a couple days

[bigo93]

On 1/25/2020 at 8:06 PM, Windows7ge said:

Maybe this will be useful to you:

 

Finally got the parts I needed to do a test run but...
Looks like this didnt work for me.

Server detects the P222 card, but not the drives in the new enclosure I made using this tutorial.

If I move my internal hdd from the internal controller to the P222 card, It does let me create a logical drive with those 4 drives.
But then as it does the drive overheat, and the P222 controller shows it's up at 88 degrees Celsius!

The drives seem to be over heating from the initial parity check when first creating a logical drive.
But overheating is not a good sign, also not sure why they are.
When set up as just the normal XPEnology server, the drives never overheated, even when sending 100GB of data to them to test them.

[Windows7ge]

Hardware RAID isn't my field of expertise but I do know SAS Expanders can be used with Hardware RAID controllers. It should be transparent to the RAID card.

 

I know the SAS Expander works with the LSI 9201-16i, it should work with the LSI 9207-8i, and their external equivalents but these are HBAs.

 

As far as diagnosing why your RAID card can't see the drives through the SAS Expander I can't give you a precise reason. How are you powering the card? Do you have active LEDs on the card when it's powered on?

[bigo93]

Bought a cheap MB on ebay.
PSU is plugged in,
hdds all plugged into port 2 of the sas expander and I hear them power up.
 

Oh hang on, couple of the LEDs arent on....

Faulty card???

 

[bigo93]

Replaced my p222 raid card with a LSI SAS9207-8E HBA card.

Still nothing

Even updated the firmware of the HBA to make sure.

[bigo93]

@Windows7ge The seller claims the sas expander I have is only compatible with p410i cards

 

Maybe that's the difference between the 001 and 002? idk

What model HBA have you used in your test setup?

[Windows7ge]

I'm uncertain as to the purpose of the LEDs but I"m thinking they have to do with the 6 internal SFF-8087 connectors. Do you have 4 connected? Have you connected them to the correct ones? Two of them aren't meant to go to drives.

 

Strange. I see no reason for it not to.

 

I can't find much documentation on what the difference is but both appear to claim that they only work with the P410/P410i meanwhile I have mine connected to a LSI 9201-16i and it has been working flawlessly.

 

I get the feeling the problem is either bad hardware, or a mis-configuration. What cables are you using from the SAS expander to the drives?

[bigo93]

I replaced the sas expander with just a SFF-8088 To SFF-8087 adapter instead

 

Finally detects drives, but only 2 of them.
The cable is a cheap SFF-8087 to SATA cable with really thin wires.

Looks like 2 of the connections are broken.
Ordered a more expensive one which looks to have thicker wires.

The expander would be better to use, cos obviously you can add up to 24 drives, not just 8 with the adapter.
I used Port 2C, 3C and 5C, which have To Backplane printed  on PCB
Neither worked.
Bottom 2 ports, 8 and 9 have To Controller; no idea what those are for.

I do prefer to get the expander working.
So have ordered a p410i card as well to see if that does anything.

But as you said, not sure why it works for your HBA works but not mine.

 

--------

 

Ah darn it!
Just realised I can only attach 4 external drives at the moment.
With that SFF-8088 To SFF-8087 adapter I need a second SFF-8088 cable!

[bigo93]

FML Decided to see if I could get a P410i card.
Fine one on ebay for a great price.
Receive today and it's for a blade server not PCI-e!
The seller showed a PCI card, disclaimer in description regarding stock images, but surely you wouldnt use a PCI card to advertise a rack server card!
Not sure if I should give they guy a negative review, From looks of it other sellers have this card, without the capacitor for 3 times the price I paid.

sigh.  Let's see if my P222 can be placed into IT mode.

 

 

[bigo93]

Wow does server hardware give everyone a headache?

Just noticed @Windows7ge in your guide you have SFF-8087 to SATA Forward Breakout cable

I thought these were like ordinary sata cables, just 4 spliced together.
Nope there's Forward, Reverse, and the one I bought says it's Latching???
Maybe that's why my server only detects 2 drives???

Ordered the correct cables, hopefully, (or do I need Reverse ones for my setup?) more waiting, more testing.
I guess I'll have a nice collection of old cards and cables if I ever want to play with them and learn about server hardware.

So my setup as in image. Would that need a forward or reverse cable?

[Windows7ge]

This was a concern I was wondering about. If you ordered the correct breakout cable.

 

Reverse cables are when you want to plug a SFF-8087 backplane to SAS/SATA ports on a motherboard.

 

Forward breakout cables are when you want to connect a SFF-8087 port on a motherboard, HBA, SAS expander, or RAID card to HDDs/SSDs. This is important.

 

I'm going to assume latching just refers to the clip on the SFF-8087 cable. I don't think it has any special meaning.

[bigo93]

Hmm, so Forward is the one required here then.
Strange as my server only detects 2 drives from only 2 of the cables. #2 and #3

 

So if I have my drives connected #1 #2 #3 #4
Only #2 and #3 are detected
If I swap cables #1 and #2, it detects the drives it couldnt before which was on #1, but not doesnt detect the drive that was on #2 before the swap

Could this be CPU limited?
I dont see why it would only detect 2 drives
At first I thought it was a bad cables, cos it was a cheap chinese one, the ones with blue wires that are ultra thin
But got a some thicker Startech ones, and same thing happening
 

[bigo93]

Well if anyone is following this thread

Couldnt get the SAS Expander to work, got one more thing to try before I stick with the way below.

So have managed to get my server to detect 4 extra drives by using one of these SFF 8088 Male to 4 x SATA cable
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mini-SAS-SFF-8088-Male-To-4x-SATA-7Pin-Female-with-Latch-Mini-SAS-26PinHost-1M/143434494014?hash=item21655cb03e:g:pP8AAOSwP7xc5jyL

So from HBA external port, directly to the SATA ports on the 4 drives.

Pretty sure not the best option, but seem like the only option if I want to expand so far

8 extra drives, but would really love the 24 extra with the sas expander 

[bigo93]

FINALLY Got it working!

Thanks to reddit user  skels130

"According to my research, many, if not most, motherboards will not power a paid device without a CPU."

 

Bought a PCI-e Riser Board that they use for bitcoin mining

and the SAS expander finally worked and updated

 

Easy way to tell if the SAS Expander will work in your motherboard is:
Turn it on.
If LED R6 is remains Solid Green permanently then your motherboards isnt powering it up fully
If LED R6 is Solid Green for a few seconds, then goes to a continuous blink, then it's powered up properly

 

Also fixed the 2 drive detected issue.
Once detected by the SPP boot USB, it then shows the drives in the Smart Storage Administrator
From there I cleared the current configuration and set each drive to a separate individual Raid 0 "Array"

Now all external 3 drives connected to the expander are being detected by the server.