ML350 Gen8 - Adding a SAS Expander

[Andy Warner]

We have maxed out 8 SFF SAS drives and need additional storage.

Ive been looking online and it seems i can just buy a 8 SFF SAS Expander (661714-B21), connect a couple of cables and it will work. Is this correct? Are there any instructions or video's on how it conencts?

Server Specs

ML350p Gen8, BIOS P72

Smary Array P420i, 512MB Battery Backed Cache, Firmware 3.42

[waaronb]

I don't know about the ML350 Gen8 in particular, but on the DL380 Gen8, no SAS expander is supported, and it has the same P420i controller. It's probably more a limitation of the controller itself not supporting the expander, not the backplane or anything, so you're probably out of luck.

The only options you have are to get a second P420 controller and wire up the second drive cage to that, but then you won't be able to span a RAID across all of the disks. Or you can get a P830 controller which lets you attach all 4 SAS ports to one controller.

But again, I don't know if that applies to the ML350 gen8 like it does for the DL380 gen8. If the ML350 Gen8 product page/quickspecs lists a compatibile SAS expander then I guess that's a good solution, I'm just a little skeptical. :)

[PGTRI]

hi,

You can use it 8 SFF SAS Expander (661714-B21).

The cabling can be found here (page 102).

http://h20628.www2.hp.com/km-ext/kmcsdirect/emr_na-c03250560-15.pdf

It looks that the kit includes only the sas expander backplane and the cables, but not the drive cage.

Thanks

regards,

[Andy Warner]

Ok thanks. Which cage would i need then?

HP 2nd Media Bay Cage Kit

661618-B21

or

HP 5U 8SFF Hot-Plug Drive Cage Kit

659484-B21

Also looking at option part list it does seem to imply it comes with a cage...

HP 5U 8SFF Expander HDD Cage Kit

661714-B21

[Bart_Heungens · Accepted solution]

Hi,

For the ML350 it is indeed a cage with a build-in expander... It is not like in the G6 servers where you had a seperate SAS expander... Now the expander is inside the drive cage...

Kr,

Bart Heungens

[BK_HPE]

Hi @AndyWarner

The HP 5U 8SFF Expander HDD Cage Kit (661714-B21) is compatible with the HP Proliant ML350p Gen8. The drive cage is included as seen in the HP ProLiant ML350p Gen8 Server series - Option Parts.  Unfortunately, I was unable to locate a video on how this all connects, but as PGTRI suggested, page 102 of the HP ProLiant ML350p Gen8 Server User Guide does show how to connect the cables.

Please let me know if I can be of any more assistance. I'm happy to answer any additional questions you might have.

[Dashpuppy]

So looking for this expander backplane to do 6 x 3.5" drives is NEARLY impossible to find anywhere in this world. Any hits ?