Chosing a hba card for my dl380p G8

[Andrevagante]

Hi, i'm in need of upgrading to hba cards on our dl380p gen 8, in order to use true nas on them, one of them is the 25 2.5" drives and the other is the 8 2.5" drives, i saw that the hp h220 only works with up to 8 drives so the server with the 8 drives should work with this one, but the other one?

What hba would you guys recommend?

Thank you so much for your time.

[support_s]

System recommended content:

1. Advisory: HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 Server - An Intermittent Drop in Speed for Link Training May Occur With the Server CPU and the NVIDIA GRID K1 Card for PLX Bridge Chipset Component During POST

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[TVVJ]

Hello,

You may review the HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 server's QuickSpecs, section "Additional Options > HP Storage Controllers" for smart array controller options.

Regards,

[pchops · Accepted solution]

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@Andrevagante wrote:

Hi, i'm in need of upgrading to hba cards on our dl380p gen 8, in order to use true nas on them, one of them is the 25 2.5" drives and the other is the 8 2.5" drives, i saw that the hp h220 only works with up to 8 drives so the server with the 8 drives should work with this one, but the other one?

FYI -- while it is true that the H220 can only connect *directly* to 8 drives maximum (using its 8 physical links split across two connectors), it can handle many more drives than that by using a SAS expander (I don't know what the HPE "official" number of SAS devices the H220 supports, but the LSI chipset it is based on supports up to 1024 devices). The SAS expander present on the drive backplane of the DL380p Gen8 25SFF model is what allows a connected HBA or RAID controller to access all 25 drive bays, even though there are only 8 physical links (across two connectors) to said backplane.

FWIW, depending on what TrueNAS edition you plan on running, the H220 (or other LSI-based HBAs) is well supported in the TrueNAS "Core" and "Enterprise" editions (the FreeBSD-based ones). Check out these posts in the TrueNAS forums:

https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/dont-be-afraid-to-be-sas-sy-a-primer-on-basic-sas-and-sata.26145/

https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/h220-or-h240-hba.96561/

https://www.truenas.com/community/resources/whats-all-the-noise-about-hbas-and-why-cant-i-use-a-raid-controller.139/

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[Andrevagante]

Thank you so much, i'm planning to use TrueNas Core, another thing, between the h220, h221 wich is better? 

[pchops]

The H220 is for internal SAS connections whereas the H221 is for external SAS connections.

Aside from that, from what is shown in the quickspecs for each model, the H220 has always been listed as a PCIe 3.0 card in all quickspecs versions, whereas older versions of the quickspecs for the H221 card list it as PCIe 2.0 (option part numbers 729552-B21 vs. 650931-B21).

[Andrevagante]

So the H220 is the better buy?

Another thing i'm having problems. is there any way of acessing the ilo of the servers outisde the Network?

[pchops]

So the H220 is the better buy?

I don't think it is some much a question of which one is better, but more of which one you need. For example, if you are going to connect the HBA to the internal drive cages, then you would use an H220 (or equivalent) HBA. However, if you are going to connect the HBA to external storage, then you would use an H221 (or equivalent) HBA.

ref:

HPE H220 Host Bus Adapter quickspecs
HPE H221 Host Bus Adapter quickspecs

Another thing i'm having problems. is there any way of acessing the ilo of the servers outisde the Network?

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I'm not sure what you mean by "outside the Network" -- could you elaborate?

[Andrevagante]

Okay, i'm buying the h220, i what to use the internal sas expander.

I want to enter the ILO from my home, so i can work on the server without going to my office!

[pchops]

I want to enter the ILO from my home, so i can work on the server without going to my office!

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This can certainly be done, but I would strongly recommend locking it down, placing it behind a VPN, etc (having the iLO directly accessible from the internet is a really bad idea). If you want to pursue this, you should start another thread specifically for that topic.

[Andrevagante]

Okay, i think thats the best way, i'll look into to it

Thank You so much