topic Betreff: Smart Array B140i controller in ProLiant Servers (ML,DL,SL)

Smart Array B140i controller

Moenchfracht — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 00:13:51 GMT

Hello community!

I have a ProLiant DL380 Gen9. I want to use Windows Servers feature S2D. For that usecase I need to directly connect the diskdrives so that they are visible to the Windows OS.

Can I configure the B140i controller to be "transparent" for some of the bays or how can I achieve this?

Thanks in advance.

BR Chris

Betreff: Smart Array B140i controller

PDP-Fan — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 09:05:52 GMT

Hi there

Many Smart Array controllers can be configured to "HBA Mode", that makes all disks directly visible on the OS. (As with a HBA card)

For the B140i controller I don't know if that feature exists but there is another solution. Just configure each single one of your disks as an individual RAID 0/1. You will see each disk on yous OS as one disk. It will only be renamed to "HP logical disk drive"

The only disadvantage is that you have to reconfigure each disk you replace in Smart Array Manager.

Betreff: Smart Array B140i controller

Moenchfracht — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 09:29:48 GMT

Hi PDP-Fan,

thanks for your answer. I tried your workaround some days ago. Windows Server does not allow RAID devices for creating S2D storage. There is a registry key described in this article https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/high-availability/enable-support-using-raid-controllers After setting this key RAID disks should be allowed for S2D, but this is not working on my system - I don't know why... So the solution seems for me to get this controller into this HBA mode. Any help is appreciated

Betreff: Smart Array B140i controller

Moenchfracht — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 04:01:01 GMT

In my iLO System Information I see the following information.

It seems like there is a HBA in my server. But how can I remove the Port 2 from the Smart Array controller and connect it to the HBA??

Thank you. Best regards Chris

[Moderator edit: Removed the Serial number for privacy.]

Betreff: Smart Array B140i controller

thutchings — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 14:39:55 GMT

Hello,

There is no option to connect an internal drive cage to the H221 HBA. This HBA has only external ports and there is no option to connect a drive cage internally.

Regarding the B140i...when the BIOS setting for the SATA controller is set for raid, then there is no option for adding drives in a NON raid configuration to that same controller The other option you may have is to go into the BIOS and change the SATA controller to be AHCI, but that will get rid of the raid option for the two existing drives. The data would still be there on those drives though, so it would be possible to configure a software raid within Windows in order to mirror those two drives.

Regards,

Betreff: Smart Array B140i controller

Moenchfracht — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 18:50:26 GMT

Hello,

thanks for your answer.

So this seems to be the only solutions. My problem now is, that the drives are RAID 0. Is it possible to write the data only to the first drive in the array and then delete the array without a data loss?

BR Chris

Re: Betreff: Smart Array B140i controller

ngnear — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 06:17:50 GMT

Hi There,

In Raid 0, there no redundancy and the data is fragmented on all the drives. So which means that there is no array. It's all just one drive extended to other for added storage.
Since there is no array, you will be deleting the data in the drives itself.

Re: Betreff: Smart Array B140i controller

Moenchfracht — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 06:20:25 GMT

Yes, thank you.

I think the best way is to backup the server, change the controller to AHCI mode and restore the server again.

Best regards

Chris