Adding additional Hard drive cage

[astreb06]

Hi

We purchased a ML350 Gen10 server for our school and it came with SFF hard drive cage.  This allows us to install 8 x 2.5" drives.  We want add an additional cage to accomodate 4 LFF drives. I can't seem to find the exact parts I need.  The SFF cage uses an Aroc controller.  Can the LFF cage use the same controller/cables or do we need adapter cables to connect to existing cables?

According to the ML350 Gen10 Server's quickspecs - https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=a00021852enw

Page 5, last bullet point under 'Chassis Types' it states: "Now the system can support mixed SFF and LFF HDD cages in one system, for example, 4LFF + 8SFF + 4LFF based on a 4
LFF chassis. If the max. number of drives are installed in all three drive boxes, the redundant fan cage kit (874572-B21) is
required." 

It is my understanding that I need the following, but what parts exactly?
1.  LFF Cage

2.  Backplate

3. Cables 

Anyone has any insight into this?

[SanjeevGoyal]

Hello

I hope all is well.

Please find the below documents link for more clarification and the required information.

HPE ProLiant ML350 Gen10 Server - Option Parts

https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docLocale=en_US&docId=emr_na-a00027630en_us

1.   LFF Backplate Cage  

           HPE ML350 Gen10 4LFF hot-plug drive backplane cage kit:874566-B21

1. Cables

         HPE ML350 Gen10 embedded SATA cable kit for LFF configuration:877578-B21

      HPE ML350 Gen10 AROC Mini-SAS cable kit for LFF configuration: 874573-B21

      HPE ML350 Gen10 smart array/ Host Bus Adapter (HBA) Mini-SAS cable kit for LFF configuration

 If you feel this was helpful please click the KUDOS! thumb below!   

Regards,

[astreb06]

HPE ProLiant ML350 Gen10 Server - Option Parts

https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docLocale=en_US&docId=emr_na-a00027630en_us

1.   LFF Backplate Cage  

           HPE ML350 Gen10 4LFF hot-plug drive backplane cage kit:874566-B21

Does the LFF cage require drive caddies for the 3.5 HDD or can the drives go in by themselves and be screwed to the cage? If they need a caddy for each drive, what is the part number for the caddy? That is also if I want to make them hot-swappable too, right?

1. Cables

         HPE ML350 Gen10 embedded SATA cable kit for LFF configuration: 877578-B21

      HPE ML350 Gen10 AROC Mini-SAS cable kit for LFF configuration: 874573-B21

      HPE ML350 Gen10 smart array/ Host Bus Adapter (HBA) Mini-SAS cable kit for LFF configuration

I am trying to understand your thinking process in regards to the cables. Are the cables intended to be used with the Aroc controller or are they using the SATA port that are on the motherboard?  My AROC controller is only has two-ports. Would I have to disconnect 1 of 2 lines going to the SFF cage and plug it into the LFF cage?  Doing this would only give me half capacity for both cages.  Am I understanding this correctly? 

[SanjeevGoyal]

Hello

HPE Smart Array P408i-a SR Gen10 Controller has Internal: 8 SAS/SATA lanes across 2 x4 Mini-SAS ports. This is supported up to 8 Hard Drives with two SAS cables. Depending on the number of Drives added to the server, more cables are required.

Since the controller support only 8 Hard Drives, for more than 8 Drives, an Expander or another PCIe based Controller needs to be added in the server.

By default, the server will be shipped with two SAS cables.

You have to use the below cable and SAS expander to add new hard drives. as well as LFF cage requires drive caddies.

874576-B21:SAS expander cable kit - port 1,2 Mini-SAS X-cable to modular controller, ports 1,2 Mini-SAS X-cable to stand up controller, ports 3,4 Mini-SAS X-cable to bays 1–8, ports 5 6, Mini-SAS X-cable to bays 9–16, ports 78 Mini-SAS X-cable to bays 17–24

876907-001:12Gb PCIe SAS expander - 28-physical links across 9x4 internal ports, 12Gb/s SAS, 6Gb/s SATA, PCIe 3.0x8 link 

4 LFF HP Chassis with optional HDD Cage Kit (874566-B21) to be selected. Upgradeable to 12 LFF max.

HPE ProLiant ML350 Gen10 Server - Identifying Components

https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=emr_na-a00027635en_us

HPE ProLiant ML350 Gen10 Server quickspecs

https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getdocument.aspx?docname=a00021852enw

If you feel this was helpful please click the KUDOS! thumb below!   

Regards,

[astreb06]

Let me say, I appreciate your help very much.

I was looking at the parts you were recommending and making sure that they met our needs. 

874576-B21 : SAS expander cable kit, is NOT compatible with LFF configuration.

According to the link below...

https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getdocument.aspx?docname=a00021852enw#

876907-001 : 12Gb PCIe SAS expander - This part is not found in the ML350 Gen10 documentation.  I found it for Gen9, but I worry that it is not compatible. 

If caddies are required for the LFF HDDs, I could not find a part number for them or find and success looking at the HPE store.

Alternatively....

I was thinking that hot-swappable setup in not required as we will not be needing to do quick changes like that in my setting.  The LFF HDD will be holding archival data and other files that will not be continually accessed by a large quantity of people either.  With that in mind, it may be easier and cost effective to utilize the SATA ports that are embedded on the motherboard and that are integrated with the embedded Smart Array S100i controller.  I know I will be sacrificing performance going this route.

I saw these parts, 

874567-B21 : None Hot Swappable LFF cage kit / does it comes with backplane? Is a backplane required for this part?

https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/options/drives-storage/server-drive-upgrade-kits/hard-drive-accessories/hpe-drive-cages/hpe-ml350-gen10-4lff-non-hot-plug-drive-cage-kit/p/874567-B21

877578-B21 : HPE ML350 Gen10 Embedded SATA Cable Kit for LFF Configuration / Do these kits come with both power and data cables or are they purchased separatly? 

https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/options/cables-cable-kits/server-cables-cable-kits/server-cables-cable-kits/hpe-server-cables-cable-kits/p/5322806?pageSize=50&sku=877578-B21

Is there anything else that I am missing?

A lot of these questions would be easily solved if HPE supplied actual pictures for all their inventory.  A picture is worth a thousand words as they say.

Please let me know if I am going the right direction.  Do I need more parts, or is what I listed satisfactory? 

[spchester]

Did you ever get a final answer on this or try doing it? I'm looking at doing something similar. I might just add another controller instead of the SAS expander since there doesn't seem to be a clear answer. (The 408i appears to be cheaper than the SAS expander.)

I believe the LFF trays are 651314-001 if you're going to supply your own drives. All the HP drives are going to come in trays.

I'm thinking I need (to add LFF cage to 8 SFF P11053-001):

830824-B21 HPE Smart Array P408i-p SR Gen10 Controller - 12Gb/s SAS, Serial ATA/600 - PCI Express 3.0 x8

874574-B21 HPE ML350 Gen10 LFF SA/HBA Cable Kit (Assuming I need one per enclosure?)

874566-B21 HPE Drive Enclosure Internal - 4 x HDD Supported - 4 x 3.5" Bay

874572-B21 HPE ML350 Gen10 Redundent Fan Cage Kit with 4 Fan Modules

[astreb06]

Hello,

   No, I did not recieve a for sure answer.  My supervisor ordered the parts that we "think" we will need, but, have yet to recieve them. Covid-19 is to blame.  I will follow-up with my supervisor about this.  

[eoji]

I am also curious if you got this setup working. My situation is that I have 5 SFF drives in one cage and just purchased the LFF cage and drive trays. I would like to just remove one of the SFF drives and add the 4 drives to the LFF cage to utilize the 8 HDD limit for the P408i-a SR Gen10 raid controller. It has two cables that go to the SFF bay currently. Would I just be able to remove one of those cables and connect it to the LFF cage? I couldn't tell if the power cable came with the LFF cage or would I need to purchase the cable kit 874573-B21 

Ideally, I would prefer not to spend $50 for just a power cable. 

[astreb06]

Hello,

We ended up purchasing the Non-hot Swappable LFF cage kit, which appears to come with a combo cable for both data and power for the drives. The actual part number was different than what was ordered, but it works for what we needed to do.  

Not knowing exactly what we would get from HPE (pictures are worth a thousand words HPE) and because the SFF SAS cables were long enough, we decided to move the SFF cage to the top server bay. On the ML350 server, if you look near the bottom bay on the motherboard, you will notice two SATA ports interfaces embedded. We decided to plug our LFF cables right into the embedded interface instead of the raid controller.  For our needs, we did not find it necessary to purchase any adapters, extenders.

Front of LFF cageBack side, no backplate was includedThis was included, both data and power cableSide with part number

[eoji]

Thank you so much! I am going to try the hot-swappable bay and see what I get for cables. 

[RATA1]

Hello,

What was the part number you used to get the cage with the cable included?

Just got my ML350 with an 8 bay SFF and it's very frustrating finding the bits required to add a LFF cage WITH the cables.. The LFF cage is advertised s a "kit" but it appears you only get the metal hardware (and the backplane if hot swap) with no cables. The power cable seems to be close to £100 which can't be right can it?

Thanks

[astreb06]

The pictures I posted earlier is what comes with the kit.

[RATA1]

So what part number did you use to order? 874567-B21?

Thanks

[spchester]

For whatever it is worth, this is the relevant BOM for what we ended up ordering to end up with 8 SFF and 8 LFF. Hopefully this will help someone else doing this down the road!

Product ID Quantity Description
P25008-001 1 HPE ProLiant ML350 G10 4U Tower Server
874566-B21 2 HPE Drive Enclosure Internal - 4 x HDD Supported - 4 x 3.5" Bay
830824-B21 1 HPE Smart Array P408i-p SR Gen10 Controller
874574-B21 2* HPE Data Transfer Cable - Data Transfer Cable for Server - Mini-SAS
874572-B21 1 HPE ML350 Gen10 Redundent Fan Cage Kit with 4 Fan Modules
651687-001 3 HP G8+ Drive Tray/Caddy SFF
CT2000MX500SSD1 3 2 TB Solid State Hard Drive (SSD)
ST16000NM002G 5 Seagate Exos 16TB 512E/4KN 12GB/s SAS
774026-001 5 HP Drive Tray/Caddy LFF G9 G10

We ended up with an extra 874574-B21, as it is a pair of cables that do both boxes, so you only need to order 1. We also ended up with the fan kit that shipped with the server and another extra cable, 877850-001 spare 878646-001.

My previous comment about the drive trays was incorrect and we ended up having to order 774026-001 as the older generation trays didn't work.

[Esben Vidstid_2]

Did it actually work? Were are looking at a similiar config:

P11052-421       HPE ML350 Gen10 4214 1P 32G 8SFF Svr

+

874574-B21      HPE ML350 Gen10 LFF SA/HBA Cable Kit

874566-B21       HPE ML350 Gen10 4LFF HDD Cage Kit

830824-B21       HPE Smart Array P408i-p SR Gen10 Ctrlr

HPE confirmed it as a usable configuration last year, but it is not very well documented and wil fail in OCA.

[astreb06]

The kit that I ordered did work for my needs.  As for spchester's setup, it sounds like he doubled what I needed.

[spchester]

@Esben Vidstid_2 yes, I believe that setup should work. I don't know if you need to upgrade the fans. It's been too long since I did that built, but I recall at some point it was recommended to upgrade the fans. Maybe your base server config already has the upgraded fans too.

Our setup worked fine and continues to work fine. We did add 8 LFF (2x 4 LFF) to the 8 SFF stock/smart buy config.

[myker]

As far as which cables come with which drive cages, you want to look at the "Drive cage options" section in the "HPE ProLiant ML350 Gen10 Server User Guide" manual. That section mentions that the non-hot-plug cage kit comes with a SATA-power split cable (I think this: https://www.serverworlds.com/hp-879451-001-sps-ca-pwr-sata-4lff-nhp-x-4-876492-002-876493-002/) while the hot-plug cage kit only comes with a "drive power cable" -- i assume something like P/N 876491-001. And then I think they assume for hot-plug capable you will figure out the data cable situation depending on what type of storage controller you are connecting the drives to (e.g. PCIe add in card).

For my purposes I just bought the non-hot-plug kit since hot plug isn't a big deal for me and I dont want to buy a storage card. I think this should allow me to plug the SATA-power split cable to the sata and power ports on the motherboard without any additional parts.

[myker]

Actually, I ended up buying 2 hot plug (874566-B21) and 1 non hot plug (874567-B21) LFF cage from online dealers. The hot plug one came in a box with an official-looking HPE security seal/stickers on the box, while the non hot plug didn't come in any kind of official packaging. As you might expect, the hot plug one had all the parts promised in the manual (power cable and cage) while the non hot plug one just came with a simple metal cage in the box and no cables even though it was advertised as "874567-B21 HPE ML350 Gen10 4LFF Non Hot Plug Drive Cage Kit" -- emphasis on the word "kit"!. Not sure who in their right mind thinks I'm gonna spend over $200 for a simple aluminum cage with no electronics or cords whatsoever!!

The good news is that it seems to work great to take one of the SAS cables from the SFF cage (there are 2, 1 for each half of the SFF bay) and attach it to the hot plug cage. So I will probably be returning the non hot plug one I bought (most overpriced item I've ever seen since it didn't come with the necessary cable). In fact, if i need to use more than 4 LFF drives in my server I will just hook up the other hot plug cage (I bought 2) and other SAS cable. Without buying an add-on storage controller card with more SAS ports this will render my SFF cage completely unusable (rather than how only 4 of the 8 bays work at the moment), but probably cheaper/easier to just buy a NVMe PCIe card or something since I'm not gonna use more than 2 SSDs in my server anyway.

I'll share the links of where I bought the products below:

hot plug cage (the good one): https://www.pcnation.com/web/details/2GL099/hpe-drive-enclosure-internal-874566-b21

non hot plug (didn't come with cables): https://www.globalonetechnology.com/874567-b21.htm

[RNR1995]

These pictures are worth a thousand words, thank you so much!
This is perfect for non critical storage, also do not need trays as this is not hot swap

[RNR1995]

Never posted pics and what cable you received with the HOT swap option? 874566-B21

[jkn48336]

Hello,

We have purchased an HPE ML350 g10 P21788-001 and we have purchased additional drive cage 4LFF 874566-b21

The drive cage kit came with one cable.  Do i need an additional cable (877578-B21) in order to make the drive cage work?

Would i plug the power cable in #34 Box 2 Power and then the 877578-b21 cable into #29 4x SATA port 2?

We will be using quantity of four 861683-B21 4tb SATA Hot Plug HPE hard drives in the 4LFF cage.

thank you, 

[myker]

The cable that came with it is a power cable that you will need to attach from the hot plug cage to the motherboard. In my case the power cable that came was too short to reach from the necessary spot on the motherboard to the top bay, so I had to put the hot plug LFF cage in the second (middle) bay. Hopefully this isn't a problem for you.

I don't think there is any point of buying more data cables unless you are gonna buy an add-on storage controller card since IIUC the storage card that comes with the HPE ML350 g10 P21788-001 can only handle 8 disks, 4 for each of the 2 SAS data cables. As it comes shipped the 2 SAS data cables are plugged into the SFF hot plug cage in the bottom bay, so out of the box you can plug in 8 SFF drives if you want. I had to disconnect one of the SAS data cables from the SFF cage and plug it into the LFF cage in the bay above the SFF one to connect the LFF drives. This means sacrificing 4 of the 8 SFF disk spots in the bottom SFF hot plug cage. In my case this didn't matter since I was only using 2 of the SFF slots.

If you were planning on using all 8 of the SFF slots and additionally 4 LFF slots in bay 2 I think you need to get a storage controller card that can handle more disks.

[myker]

The other option if you want to maximize the number of hard drives you can connect without getting a new storage card is to get the non-hot-plug drive cage and SATA cable to connect the drives directly to the motherboard without dealing with SAS or the storage controller. Let me know if you want more information about that option.

[unamasch]

Hello, 

I am also trying to add 4LFF to my current configuration,  I have by default:

1 x HPE Smart Array P408i-p SR Gen10 Controller and I am using 2 ports on smart array modular connector (AROC) for my 8SFF.

What I tried :

4LFF DISK BAY : 874035-001 : 1 port (power) + 1 port (Mini-SAS)
CABLES : HPE ML350 Gen10 Smart Array/HBA Mini-SAS Cable Kit For LFF

SATA PORT 2 => 4LFF BAY port data
BOX 2 DRIVE POWER CONNECTOR => 4LFF BAY port power

RESULT : 4LFF are not recognize at boot

I don't get it, @spchester , did you mount a second P408i-p SR Gen10 Controller ? I don't see any SAS expander in your configuration, can you please explain me how you did it ?