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Upgrade DL380p G8 from SFF to LFF

 
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AJudah
New Member

Upgrade DL380p G8 from SFF to LFF

Hi,

I have DL380p G8 Server with 8 SFF bays and a DvD drive in a seperate 8 bay enclosure.

 I would like to drop 8 x 3.5 SAS drives i have available into the machine. To do this i believe i need to upgrade the device enclosure from SFF to LFF for this enclosure. I believe i need to remove the entire front panel assembly and replace it with a LFF version. 

I have read posts of people doing this on G7 and G6 machines but i have not found confirmation this is possible for G8.

Can someone knowledgeable advise if these are the parts i need?

LFF front panel assembly

 

Front panel cage assembly, 12-bay Large Form Factor (LFF) hard drive - Includes the drive connector backplane board, cables, and left and right ears 1

670944-001

 

From <https://h20566.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docLocale=en_US&docId=emr_na-c03243782&sp4ts.oid=4132829>

 

HP 2U LFF Ball Bearing Gen8 Rail Kit with CMA

663480-B21

 

From <http://h20564.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c03235291>

 

Is this as simple as pull out and swap over of parts and connect cables or do we need a specialist?

Any other parts needed?

Does the bios needs to be changed or updated after this change?

The device is out of warranty so we are not concerned about whether this is covered or not.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks!

8 REPLIES 8
DanRobinson
HPE Pro

Re: Upgrade DL380p G8 from SFF to LFF

The Gen8 is 2 completely different Chassis for LFF and SFF.

SFF Drives: 3.44 x 17.54 x 27.50 in (8.73 x 44.55 x 69.85 cm)

LFF Drives: 3.44 x 17.54 x 29.50 in (8.73 x 44.55 x 74.93 cm)

 

You might be able to frankenstein something together but its not something I would reccomend.
I would just try to pickup a LFF DL380p thats been stripped and then transplant all the parts over.

 


I work for HPE

Accept or Kudo

surferleo
Occasional Visitor

Re: Upgrade DL380p G8 from SFF to LFF

Hi,

I have HP DL380e Gen8 I think the same that it is impossible to upgrade it with LFF.

My advice is to upgrade the HD drives. Now it costs only 100 Euro for a 4TB HD drive.

That is what I want to do for my DL 380 Server. By the way, it is used so it is very worthy: https://www.servershop24.de/en/server/hp/dl-series/dl380/gen8/

Miloman1959
Occasional Visitor

Re: Upgrade DL380p G8 from SFF to LFF

Hi, sorry to intrude in this old post (but glad I stumbled upon it: in the process of getting one of these). Is it possible to do it the other way around, so add SFF cage to a LFF server?

Jerry Hancock
Occasional Advisor

Re: Upgrade DL380p G8 from SFF to LFF

I have somewhat the same question.  I have a DL380 and want to add an external LFF frame, cage, not sure what it would be called.  I assume I use a small SAS connector to lace the server to the external LFF cage.  I have all the cables, HBAs etc.  I just need the part number or name of the external LFF frame or cage.  I have about 10TB of 3.5" drives I want to turn into a ZFS pool for backups.  the alternative is to just put them into an old deskside computer  frame for the power and mounting and run an external SAS cable over to them.  I would like it to be clean though.

Thanks.

Jerry

Jerry Hancock
Occasional Advisor

Re: Upgrade DL380p G8 from SFF to LFF

what is the external LFF frame, cage, etc called for the HP Proliant series?  Part number or name?  I'm looking for something that will hold 6 or 8 or more 3.5" drives LFF drives.  I have all the HBAs, cables, etc. 

Thanks

Jerry

BeardyDude
New Member
Solution

Re: Upgrade DL380p G8 from SFF to LFF

HP Storageworks D2600 , AJ940A will do you for 6GB/s SAS and SATA3.

2U, 12x hot swappable LFF drive bays, dual PSU. Rather cheap nowadays! Just need a single external SAS cable linking to the system.

You can buy an HBA / RAID card with external 8088 connector, or buy various slot mounted converters / long cables with the right ends.

 

BeardyDude
New Member

Re: Upgrade DL380p G8 from SFF to LFF

Just be warned it's G7 so uses different trays!

The D3600 has G8 style trays, and 6GB's SATA3 (sorry, I was mistaken, the d2600 only has 3gb SATA II, not an issue for mech drives anyway), but is still rather expensive

Jerry Hancock
Occasional Advisor

Re: Upgrade DL380p G8 from SFF to LFF

hey guys - thanks for the replies.

I ended-up getting two frames. One's an LFF G8 type that would normally
install in the DL380 G8 instead of the SSF cage. That was local as -new.
I figured I would use it externally. Right after I purchased it, I found
an HP AJ940A StorageWorks D2600 Disk Enclosure. This is an external
enclosure with dual 450W controllers and supplies (supplies, supplies,
supplies!). I had two HBAs (SCO8Es) with external connectors as well as an
expansion card that takes my P410i controller and allows you to lace-up to
like 24 more devices. This is called an HP 24-Bay 3GB PCIe SAS Expander
Card 487738-001 468405-002 468406-B21. Might be 24 more controllers
actually. This card had an external SAS port specific for tape, it reads,
so I attached my LTO4 tape library to it and it works great. I added one of
those cards that takes the internal cables and converts them to external as
well. So not including the tape specific connector, I jhave 4 external
ports to connect to the 4 on the D2600.

But:

I'm getting all the throughput on the tape, but the raid and SSDs are only
doing about 160MB per second. This seems light. On my other
deskside machine with only one lighter CPU, I was getting 230 - 260MB/s. I
had upgraded the DL380 CPUs to X5690s so I know they aren't the issue...
I'm only using two of the ports on the input to the D2600. I'm wondering
if I should recable it to use the P410I through the internal/external
connectors instead of the SCO8Es? Add more ports? but that shouldn't
matter just going drive to drive. I have to do more testing. I'm using
ZFS for the file systems. All the raids are ZFS raids. that must be it.

Anyway, after all this, adding the external enclosure, bumping up the CPUs,
running the power for performance instead of savings, etc, adding the tape
library plus a second external scsi LTO4 for one-offs, I'm getting notices
from PG&E that I'll be in the penalty phase again this month. I was hoping
the power bill last month was because the kids were home for SIP. I've
always been on the border of the 45 cents per hour penalty due to my CNC
machines but now I'm pretty sure it is the server... Hey, but who cares?
this is raw compute power! How much does one person need? I have 13
computers and devices not including all my home automation gear (which I
put in to save power, duh). I changed all the lights to LEDs and we
dropped down to around Al Gore kind of numbers but I'm back up there.

Anyway, enough said, sorry if I'm boring you but not that many people reply
so this will teach you! In case you forgot, the question, is should I add
more ports to the external enclosure?

Thanks again,

Jerry