Tag Archive | "HP SAS Expander"

HP P411 SAS Controller

How to Install/ Upgrade Memory and a BBU on a HP Smart Array P411

The HP Smart Array P411 is a fairly inexpensive 6.0gbps SAS 2 and SATA III controller. To enhance performance, the HP Smart Array P411 has a variety of cache options available. This is a quick guide installing a 512MB DRAM plus BBU kit to the controller. A similar setup must be used in order to do things like flash the HP SAS Expander with new firmware. Read the full story

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SC216E1-R900 Front View of Hot Swap Bays

Supermicro SC216E1-R900LPB Review 24x 2.5in hot-swap chassis with 900w Redundant PSU

I discuss SAS Expanders a lot on this site, primarily dealing with the HP SAS Expander. One option that came out in the December 2010 High-end and Mid-Range Buyer’s guides was purchasing a chassis with a redundant PSU and a built-in SAS expander. Today we will be looking at one of Supermicro’s SC216 series chassis, the SC216E1-R900LPB. Read the full story

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PE-2SD1-R10-1 PCMIG 1U Backplane with PCIe Slot

SAS Expanders, Build Your Own JBOD DAS Enclosure and Save – Iteration 2 – A Better Solution

After completing the first DAS/ SAS Expander JBOD enclosure project I realized that there was a major area of improvement. Using less than 30% of a large 4U case’s volume for useful purposes seemed like the key area to improve upon. As I was completing that build I soon realized that I wanted a secondary server to be able to access some of the drives for EXSi or Hyper-V virtual machines. Further, NAS operating systems that run poorly in virtual machines, such as unRaid require dedicated server for testing. I could have built another server in another enclosure, but I decided that I could improve upon the original design and access drives that are housed in the Big WHS ecosystem through a simple cable swap. This eliminates the need to physically move drives from enclosure to enclosure. The following is a slightly (approximately $20) more expensive version of the original Build Your Own JBOD DAS Enclosure with a HP SAS Expander iteration.

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Big_WHS_Supermicro

The Big WHS: A Big Mother(board) Change of Plans

This week the Big WHS underwent a major change and dropped the Asus motherboard in favor of a Supermicro one. Apparently the Asus P6T7 WS Supercomputer motherboard does not like the HP SAS Expander at all. I could not find a card that could see the SAS Expander. This all culminated when I finally took the working setup out of the Gigabyte H55 board and couldn’t get it to work in the Asus. For those wondering, yes, it was a $200 motherboard/ CPU with 36 raid ports + another 5 onboard and 1 esata. Windows Home Server v1 can only support 32 drives so that is a lot of connectivity at about $660!

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Server Parts by Amazon.com

Image of Raid Controller SASUC8I Intel SASUC8I RAID Controller
Image of SUPERMICRO X8ST3-F - Motherboard - ATX - LGA1366 Socket - iX58 - 2 x Gigabit Ethernet - onboard graphics Supermicro X8ST3-F
Image of Hitachi Deskstar 3.5 inch 3TB 7200RPM SATA III 6Gbps 64MB Cache Internal Hard Drive 0S03086 Hitachi 3TB