P2000 MSA G3 SAS & Proliant Gen9 Server

[Magic_Hair]

I am trying to see if I can connect a (DL380) Gen9 to a P2000 MSA G3 SAS.

Product Bulletin/Quickspecs doesnt really say.

This HBA: HP Smart Array P441 (726825-B21) is designed to connect disk storage/tapes, but doesn't call out the P2000.

Does anyone know?

Thanks

[Magic_Hair]

My disti came back with this HBA

HP H241 Smart HBA 726911-B21 

Which seems compatible (though not in product bulletin for DL380 Gen9)

However,  I still can't be sure of compatiblity with P2000 G3 SAS -  and alos I dont know how to work out what SAS cable to use...

[CalvinZito]

@Magic_Hair

P2000 and MSA 2040 SAS qualifications on Gen 9 are underway.  Keep track of progress on Single Point of Connectivity Knowledge (SPOCK) over next few months.

[zqadri]

any update on this...?

[CalvinZito]

MSA P2000 G3 SAS and MSA 2040 both support ProLiant Gen9 ML and DL servers. The P2000 G3 only works with the H241 HBA and connection speeds of 6Gb/s. The MSA 2040 SAS supports both the Host Bus Adapter H241 and Smart Array P441/4GB.  Hope that helps!

[grimson]

---

@HPstorageGuy wrote:

MSA P2000 G3 SAS and MSA 2040 both support ProLiant Gen9 ML and DL servers. The P2000 G3 only works with the H241 HBA and connection speeds of 6Gb/s. The MSA 2040 SAS supports both the Host Bus Adapter H241 and Smart Array P441/4GB.  Hope that helps!

---

Hello,

Unfortunately a support engineer states that the H241 HBA is not supported with MSA2040 SAS storage and ESX5.5.

This is because we have an issue with 3 ESX5.5i Gen9 hosts, fully up-2-date (H241 firmware for now 1.34 but as of tomorrow on 2.14) when I reboot one of the controllers the path keeps dead until I reboot the ESXi host nomatter how many 'rescan adapter' tries.

The H241was valid before:

http://h20272.www2.hp.com/Content/ConfigurationSetDetailView.aspx?Id=71759

But the current URL is this:

http://h20272.www2.hp.com/Content/ConfigurationSetDetailView.aspx?Id=72849

Which no longer states the H241 HBA :( and that's HP's point of view as for now! (issue is already open for 2 months and encounting and the ESXi + MSA2040 is not in production as for this problem).

So, this is a costly 'mistake' for now removing the HBA241 and ESX5.5 from the list! thank you HP.

[Manfred-P]

Hello,

I'm working on nearly the same issue, and I found your post.

My set up is msa2040 with 2 dl360g9 with hba 241 firmware 2.14  and esxi 6.0.0 with HP iso image.

There's also the same issue, that only when I reboot the esxi server, a new lun is found.

If you got any resolution from HP please let me know, I'm going also to test some things and post again.

nice day

Manfred

[BK_HPE]

Hello @grimson

While the HP H241 12Gb 2-ports Ext Smart Host Bus Adapter (726911-B21) is not compatible with the HP ProLiant DL380 gen9.  The HP H240ar 12Gb 2-ports Int Smart Host Bus Adapter (726757-B21) is compatible with the HP ProLiant DL380 Server Gen9 series, which you can see in the HP H240ar 12Gb 2-ports Int Smart Host Bus Adapter QuickSpecs.

The HP H240ar Smart Host Bus Adapter comes in a Flexible Smart SAS HBA form factor that provides a basic building block for simple RAID storage solution for select HP Gen9 Servers with a Flexible Smart Array & SAS HBA slot. Delivering up to 12 Gb/s SAS connectivity for internal hard drives it provides increased scalability, basic data protection, and flexibility for storage connectivity. You get optimized performance and uptime for your entry-level storage requirements. This HBA supports SAS, SATA, Solid State Drives (SSDs) and internal tape drives for increased flexibility.

The HP H240ar Smart Host Bus Adapter and the attached internal storage devices are configured, deployed and managed by the easy to use HP Smart Storage Administrator software which is included in the intelligent provisioning capabilities of the server.

[JeroenL]

Hello @LSW

You mention the H240 HBA. This is an INTERNAL only HBA.

It will be very difficult to connect a MSA2040 to this HBA.

Better get your engineers work harder to provide us with a fix to get the MSA2040 working with the H241 HBA when used with VMware or provide a cost-neutral replacement of the HBA's and the MSA2040 controllers so we can use FC or 10Gbe iSCSI.

At this moment we have two nearly identical setups, both with 3 DL380gen9 servers and a MSA2040 SAS san and both are wasting power doing nothing until these problems are solved. One of these sets also has a very nasty 10Gbe problem again using only HP hardware.

Our customers are getting more pissed off as the days are passing and they can only look at rackspace being used by state of the art brand new hardware doing NOTHING. They are rapidly losing faith in HP as their tier one technology brand and so am I. I personally am realy thinking of advising my customers Huawei or whatever other brand instead of HP since this is not the first "incident" with HP.

[grimson]

~ # esxcli hpssacli cmd -q 'ctrl all show'

Smart Array P440ar in Slot 0 (Embedded)   (sn: PDNLH0BRH7U35F)

Smart HBA H241 in Slot 1 (HBA Mode)       (sn: PDNNL0ARH7Q0B3)

Smart HBA H241 in Slot 2 (HBA Mode)       (sn: PDNNL0ARH7T0KH)

~ # esxcli hpssacli cmd -q 'ctrl slot=1 ld all show'

Error: The specified device does not have any logical drives.

Above ESXi Shell command's would 'nudge' the HBA and show me the path again.
First command is to identify the HBA's, second command is to 'nudge' the HBA with the path loss state.

It did work with Firmware 1.34 and driver 5.5.57 as I can recall.

Also a double restart of a controller gave me back the loss of path, but all not really recommended for production.