HP DL180 Gen10 LFF use all 12 drive bays with P408i-a controller

[Peter73]

Hello,

For a customer we bought a HP DL180 Gen10 server a couple of years ago.

This server was originally equipped with a Modular P408i-a controller, and 8 3,5 400Gb disks. Controller was connected to Box2 and Box3 as stated in the document. Box1 was empty, and connected to onboard controller.

Following this document : HPE ProLiant DL180 Gen10 Server Maintenance and Service Guide > Page 119 for cable installation.

As there is need for more storage in the server we bought 4x800Gb disks and put them into Box1, to our surprise the disks are not shown in het Storage Admin, and also not shown in the Intelligent Provisioning. When placing the disks in the server the led comes on green, then after a few moments the leds go to amber on state.

We swapped over cables going from P408i-a controller port A to Box 2 over to Box 1 and disks showed up in Storage admin. Then connecting the cable from onboard controller to Box 2 the disks in Box 2 are not shown.

So disks and Box 1 is working, but not when connected to onboard controller.

How can we get all 3 boxes working in this setup?

Or is another controller needed to get all 3 boxes working?

[Sham82 · Accepted solution]

Hello @Peter73

Thank you for your POST.
It seems like the newly installed Drives are SAS, that you have connected to onboard controller (S100i)
please Note S100i only supports SATA drives.

Regards
HPE

[Peter73]

As this is stated in the document, but not clear when the onboard port is used as third port for the 408i I will accept this as solution.

However the real solution is to install a 416i and connect all 3 portst to it. The 408 only supports 8 lanes so will never support more then 8 disks.

That is the actual solution, to replace the installed controller.