HP DL360p Gen8 - P420i controller

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errmatt

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Jun 3, 2014
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Humor me for a few here.... I'm well aware of the specifics of why a controller like the HP smartarray series is not necessarily a good fit for ZFS. I have a different production 9.10 box running an M1015 in IT mode and 6 1tb WD reds. However, I have this Dl360p Gen8 that I rescued from the retirement pile at work, and figured I'd play around a bit with it and see what I could make work for FreeNAS, and test the new 10 beta 2 build with it with non-critical data. The built-in P420i controller does not have the "smart array advanced" license pack installed, nor does it have a FBWC module, and it is on firmware revision 8.00 which I believe is the latest. Hopefully this is a worthy discussion for this section, if not let me know and I will move it to the 10 section?

So, I sorted out how to enable "HBA mode" or otherwise called "passthrough" mode on this P420i controller, and I can get FreeNAS installed on the G8, but it only recognizes the drives in the first TWO bays, no matter how I swap drives around, and I'm trying to figure out why.

Since the G8 I got my hands on does not have support from HP any more, I could not download the "Service Pack for Proliant" CD to run the full Smart Storage program. However, the ESXi customized HP build installer has a utility called "hpssacli" or "ssacli" (depending on your controller version, on my older G7 with the P410i, it's called hpssacli), located under /opt/hp/hpssacli/bin or /opt/hp/ssacli/bin that you can use to set HBA mode on. All I had to do was boot from the HP customized ESXi installer media, switch to the console (alt+F1), login as root with no password, cd to the /opt/hp/ssacli/bin directory and run the following commands:

./ssacli controller slot=0 modify hbamode=on forced

After rebooting the machine, it displays the following message during the controller init:

Code:
Hardware RAID support is disabled via controller NVRAM configuration settings.


Also, if you press F5 during the controller init and enter the built in SSA and run a diag report, you can see this:

upload_2016-11-24_21-55-49.png


In order to make sure I was being thorough, and to test out the "pass through" mode of the controller, I booted a DBAN iso and wiped all the drives I have in the slots. For reference, DBAN recognizes all the drives I have loaded in every bay properly, when the HBA mode on the controller is enabled.

upload_2016-11-24_21-51-37.png


At this point, I figured I was in like flint. I loaded up the latest FreeNAS 10 Beta2 iso and ran through the installer. After getting some basics configured, I went to try and add a test volume and could only see the first two disks. I shut everything down, swapped disks around and determined that no matter what configuration I put the disks in, only disks in the first two bays are recognized by FreeNAS. After fiddling around with things for a bit, I decided maybe it was a bug in 10, so I loaded the latest 9.10-U4 iso and installed that, only to find I have the same problem there.

dmesg section showing SmartArray controller init:

Code:
ciss0: <HP Smart Array P420i> port 0x5000-0x50ff mem 0xfbe00000-0xfbefffff,0xfbdf0000-0xfbdf03ff irq 34 at device 0.0 on pci2
ciss0: PERFORMANT Transport


dmesg section showing the first two drives and the SD card in the onboard slot:

Code:
da0 at ciss0 bus 32 scbus3 target 0 lun 0
da0: <HP EG0300FBLSE HPD7> Fixed Direct Access SPC-3 SCSI device
da0: Serial Number 6XP5EK4H0000B337LABJ
da0: 135.168MB/s transfers
da0: Command Queueing enabled
da0: 286102MB (585937500 512 byte sectors)
da2 at umass-sim0 bus 0 scbus7 target 0 lun 0
da2: <HP iLO Internal SD-CARD 2.10> Fixed Direct Access SCSI device
da2: Serial Number 000002660A01
da2: 40.000MB/s transfers
da1 at ciss0 bus 32 scbus3 target 1 lun 0
da2: 7580MB (15523840 512 byte sectors)
da2: quirks=0x2<NO_6_BYTE>
da1: <HP EG0300FBLSE HPD7> Fixed Direct Access SPC-3 SCSI device
da1: Serial Number 6XP5EK8L0000B337LC7D
da1: 135.168MB/s transfers
da1: Command Queueing enabled
da1: 286102MB (585937500 512 byte sectors)


Anyone have any thoughts on how to get FreeNAS to enumerate the other disks on this controller? This doesn't seem like a limitation on the controller, since other OS's (dban/linux and ESXi) can see and utilize all disks loaded in various ports, and FreeNAS can see the first two disks and they appear to be directly passed through by the controller. The disks are all HP disks also, though some are different sizes and firmware revisions.... but each is enumerated fine IF it is in slot 1 or 2. I was thinking that possibly the ciss driver is only attempting to enumerate two devices on the controller because that's how many logical drives are supported by this controller when it's in regular array mode? Am I way off track there?

Do I need to somehow (and how would I?) disable the ciss driver, since a little bit of research leads me to believe that it's for accessing the logical disks on an HP controller and shouldn't be needed for direct SCSI access?

Anyone have any other suggestions (besides "buy another M1015 and longer SAS cables" of course ;))
 
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errmatt

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Jun 3, 2014
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Did you get anywhere with this?

Not really. I gave up and ordered a FBWC module for the controller and I'm going to use it for a different purpose in my lab... it's a nice setup being rackable and having iLO and all, and it has eight 2.5 hotswap bays in a 1u package, and I have four 900gb and two 300gb SAS drives that would've worked nice for a couple of good sized pools. I haven't done anything with it yet and my FBWC module hasn't been delivered yet, so I could still load up an installation on the SD card if anyone had any more ideas to try. I have a different desktop-grade machine that I'm going to play around with 10 beta 2 on I think.

I did mess around some more with trying to not load the "ciss" driver just for a hunch, but wasn't able to find a tunable that I could set that would do it (I tried "load_ciss=NO" or "ciss_load=NO" but neither worked.)

I also was able to get ahold of the latest Service Pack for Proliant CD ( :rolleyes: for HP and their pay wall for firmware updates). I applied all the latest firmware updates I could to the unit. (the 8.00 firmware I had previously applied to the P420i was still the latest though). I used the Smart Storage Administrator application on the SPP cd to take a closer look at the controller settings, and used it to double-triple-quadruple "apply" the HBA mode settings to the controller, wiped the drives again for good measure, but still was unable to get FreeNAS to enumarate any drives that weren't the first two attached drives.

Just for giggles, and because I was kind of toying with the idea of testing out ZFS on Linux, I attached an Ubuntu iso to the ilo console and booted that, and it was able to detect all drives I had connected.

Anyway, short answer is no... no further progress. But the 10 beta looks pretty slick, so there's that. :D

[EDIT]: Also worth noting, the SPP disc also does firmware updates on the drives that it can.... so it updated firmware on the one 900 gig drive that's currently installed, and the two 300 gig drives also, to whatever is the latest HPE has for those. The creaky old 146gb drives I had in there during the dban screenshot above have ancient firmware, but it must be deprecated from the newer SPP cd's since they weren't updated. I pulled those and set them aside for that and other reasons.
 
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Tourman

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Jul 24, 2015
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I know this is a pretty old topic, but if anyone is researching this, you can turn on HBA mode using the SPP Gen 8.1 ISO. If you need it PM me.
 

Tourman

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Jul 24, 2015
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I know this is a pretty old topic, but if anyone is researching this, you can turn on HBA mode using the SPP Gen 8.1 ISO. If you need it PM me.

I get a lot of PMs for this. Basically you need to find a serial number on an eBay G9 or higher model and add it to your HP account. Then download the provisioning services iso and change to HBA mode. Note I've had mixed results with this because of missing drivers with vmware.

HP only checks if a serial number is valid and grants access to all downloads then.

It's kinda dumb they hide firmware updates behind a paywall.
 

CII

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Jul 9, 2019
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I get a lot of PMs for this. Basically you need to find a serial number on an eBay G9 or higher model and add it to your HP account. Then download the provisioning services iso and change to HBA mode. Note I've had mixed results with this because of missing drivers with vmware.

HP only checks if a serial number is valid and grants access to all downloads then.

It's kinda dumb they hide firmware updates behind a paywall.

Where in HP account I have add serial number ?
 
Joined
Sep 3, 2019
Messages
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I get a lot of PMs for this. Basically you need to find a serial number on an eBay G9 or higher model and add it to your HP account. Then download the provisioning services iso and change to HBA mode. Note I've had mixed results with this because of missing drivers with vmware.

HP only checks if a serial number is valid and grants access to all downloads then.

It's kinda dumb they hide firmware updates behind a paywall.

Appreciate that heads up! This was annoying but ended up being pretty easy. Simply went to Ebay, searched for a DL360p Gen9, kept looking through pictures until I found one that listed the Serial and Product number, went to HP and created a free account, went to their Warranty's Section, and clicked to add a warranty policy. Entered in the Serial and Product number from ebay, Told it to use the shared license so I didn't mess up the poor guy selling it. It added just fine, I was then able to download the SPP I wanted. Then I went back and removed the warranty from my account. Done. I would have never known about this if it wasn't for Tourman's advice. Thank You!
 
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Also, in my case I am using The DL360p for an Unraid array, Filled with 1TB SAS 10k RPM Drives in the first 6 Slots, and 2 old Sata 500GB SSD's for Cache Drives/Fast Storage in the last 2 Slots. After setting to HBA Mode all passed through to the OS Just fine. Loving Unraid so far!
 

Tourman

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Jul 24, 2015
Messages
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If anyone is going through this, here's the steps I just followed today:

  • Grab serial number off a G10 unit from ebay, then add it to your account as a "shared license".
  • Download the SPP Gen8.1 ISO <-- this is important, later versions do not include a CLI shell.
  • Burn the ISO to a 32GB or SMALLER usb drive using the HPE USB Boot Utility. Rufus doesn't work when you try to boot the utility, and the application doesn't support > 32GB USB drives.
  • REMOVE ALL PHYSICAL DRIVES PRIOR TO POWERING ON SERVER
  • Click on the Smart Storage Administrator, and clear the config off the controller. Exit out of the SSA Utility by clicking the X at the top.
  • If you have never updated the firmware on your controller, click on "Firmware Update" to launch HP SUM and do it now. You might need to reboot.
  • Press Ctrl+Alt+D+B+X
  • Type this in the console:
    • hpssacli controller slot=0 modify hbamode=on forced
  • Get out of the console, and go back into the HPE SSA Utility
  • Click on the controller, click on configure, click on configure controller
  • select first option "Set all controller ports to HBA mode", click OK, click finish.
  • Done! Power off, pluck in some fancy drives and off you go.
Whether this works or not in FreeNAS is going to be up to the supported drivers. But at least we have the hard part done! Also credit due is this youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuaezJd4C3I
 
Joined
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Messages
1,135
I was also able to do this on an old P822 controller using Ubuntu. I downloaded hpssacli-2.40-13.0_amd64.deb https://downloads.linux.hpe.com/sdr/repo/mcp/pool/non-free/ and installed that on the Ubuntu server to have hpssacli available. That command is also available on VMWare. For ESXi 5.5 -> /opt/hp/hpssacli/bin/hpssacli. For ESXi 6.5 -> /opt/smartstorageadmin/ssacli/bin/ssacli.
 

qhash

Dabbler
Joined
May 17, 2018
Messages
18
If anyone is going through this, here's the steps I just followed today:

  • Grab serial number off a G10 unit from ebay, then add it to your account as a "shared license".
  • Download the SPP Gen8.1 ISO <-- this is important, later versions do not include a CLI shell.
  • Burn the ISO to a 32GB or SMALLER usb drive using the HPE USB Boot Utility. Rufus doesn't work when you try to boot the utility, and the application doesn't support > 32GB USB drives.
  • REMOVE ALL PHYSICAL DRIVES PRIOR TO POWERING ON SERVER
  • Click on the Smart Storage Administrator, and clear the config off the controller. Exit out of the SSA Utility by clicking the X at the top.
  • If you have never updated the firmware on your controller, click on "Firmware Update" to launch HP SUM and do it now. You might need to reboot.
  • Press Ctrl+Alt+D+B+X
  • Type this in the console:
    • hpssacli controller slot=0 modify hbamode=on forced
  • Get out of the console, and go back into the HPE SSA Utility
  • Click on the controller, click on configure, click on configure controller
  • select first option "Set all controller ports to HBA mode", click OK, click finish.
  • Done! Power off, pluck in some fancy drives and off you go.
Whether this works or not in FreeNAS is going to be up to the supported drivers. But at least we have the hard part done! Also credit due is this youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuaezJd4C3I
ISO is 5.44GB - how do you burn it to 32GB usb drive?
 

caligulaa

Cadet
Joined
Jan 29, 2020
Messages
1
Hello everyone, thanks for the great info!
Does this ebay thing still work? I messed around a bit with no luck... Will look into the Ubuntu bit as well otherwise..
 

jgreco

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Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
"HBA mode" is insufficient. The ciss driver in FreeBSD does not work that well under the heavy loads FreeNAS and ZFS can place on it, and things such as error handling and reporting are somewhat "off" as well. This is not something anyone should be trying to do.
 
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