HP Proliant DL360 Gen9 controller nightmare!

[RobClarke41]

Anyone buying Gen9 servers read the small print about the controller card it comes with very carefully.  My server came with a B140i card.  When the server arrived I added the hard drives but nothing happened.  Could not see them in the ACU or Smart Storage as they now call it.  Turns out that this card only supports SATA disks.  Great.  All my disks are SAS!

Some of these Dynamic Smart Array cards simply do not let you use SAS until you buy a licence but not with the B140i.  I guess the lesson is to read the small print.  I just never expected HP to sell a modern server that doesn't accept SAS drives.  At the very least the error it gives you when attaching them could be more helpful. 

So after some discussion with my supplier I am buying this card http://h30094.www3.hp.com/product.aspx?sku=11112576&mfg_part=726736-B21&pagemode=ca a HP Smart Array P440ar/2GB FBWC 12Gb 2-ports Int SAS Controller

As I don't have much experience fitting these I just wanted to know what it entails.  Do I simply attach the card and use the existing drive bays as they are? Do I need to disable the old card? Do I need to enable the new card in the BIOS?  Is it easy to attach? Any information on this would be really helpful.  As would any advise on my choice of card.

[RbBsmn]

Yeah, the 360 Gen9 is the follow up of the 380e Gen8 which also came with the B-series controller.
Not a fan of them, but it explains the price difference compared to a 380 Gen9.

You are the first person I heard of who got his Gen9 already btw!

[Bart_Heungens]

Hi,

This is not correct.

The DL160 gen9 is the follow-up of the DL360e gen8 and the DL180 gen9 is the follow-up of the DL380e...

The server is indeed foreseen with a basic RAID controller and gives the choice to the customer to choose between a series of RAID controllers and HBA's for more storage performance and capacity by using the AROC connection (Adaptive RAID on chip).

Take a look at the quickspecs, you will see various cards are available... And there will be more in the future...

Kr,

Bart Heungens

[waaronb]

My reseller doesn't seem to have much selection on the Gen9 models yet so I'll have to see what they're like in a few months.

I did read the quickspecs though and it tells you in there that the Bxxx cards are just SATA.  Admittedly it's not exactly obvious if you're skim reading.

The performance models all have the P440 and that's what I'm waiting on availability, for those pre-configured models, but yes, it's a good warning to others that if you want or need SAS, make sure you know what you're ordering.

In my mind it was like the old E200 controllers and their limited functionality (but even those could do SAS), compared to the P400 model.  It's too bad they didn't do something like that where it does SAS but just doesn't have the same features or included cache memory/battery/supercap etc.