Stuck on LSI card and HP Storage Works P4500 G2

[ims]

Good day!

I have two hp storage works p4500 G2 with 12x2TB drives.
I understand that P420 not working well with FreeNAS.
And I start looking another HBA card and stuck....
In that server used backplane like this https://www.blackmoreit.com/507304-...plane-490375-001-f-storageworks-p4500-g2.html
It has 12 sas connectors for drives and 1 minisas for connection to raid card.
It means that LSI/HBA card must have 12 channel per port, right?
So I can't use 9207-8i like cards cause its 4 channel per port.
I can use Dell H310 card but in Hp server its probably not good too.
So I stuck with that backplane and raid card?

Many thx for answer

 

[HoneyBadger]

Your SAS backplane is an "expander." Think of it like a network switch in this sense. Just because you have 8, 16, 24 or more computers connected to a switch, you can still use only one cable to connect your modem, router, or other network device.

The 9207-8i will be fine - you would just connect one miniSAS SFF-8087 to the backplane. It would have 4 SAS lanes, and all twelve disks would share that speed. Unless you plan to use solid state drives, you shouldn't feel any limitations from this, as 4x SAS lanes at 600MB/s is 2.4GB/s of bandwidth.

You can also use the Dell H310 unless there is a limitation in the HP server BIOS that prevents non-HP cards from booting.

 

[Herr_Merlin]

Good day!

I have two hp storage works p4500 G2 with 12x2TB drives.
I understand that P420 not working well with FreeNAS.

Thats wrong you can flash the P420 to HBA Mode :)

 

[ims]

Your SAS backplane is an "expander." Think of it like a network switch in this sense. Just because you have 8, 16, 24 or more computers connected to a switch, you can still use only one cable to connect your modem, router, or other network device.

The 9207-8i will be fine - you would just connect one miniSAS SFF-8087 to the backplane. It would have 4 SAS lanes, and all twelve disks would share that speed. Unless you plan to use solid state drives, you shouldn't feel any limitations from this, as 4x SAS lanes at 600MB/s is 2.4GB/s of bandwidth.

You can also use the Dell H310 unless there is a limitation in the HP server BIOS that prevents non-HP cards from booting.

Thx for answer. Try both variation.
In the future if I decided to use SSD what your suggestion in that case?

 

[ims]

Thats wrong you can flash the P420 to HBA Mode :)

True. But I found 2 threads where after flash, P420 don't see more than 2 disk in first two bays.

 

[HoneyBadger]

In the future if I decided to use SSD what your suggestion in that case?

You might want a backplane that can has 8 SAS lanes going to the HBA, or even a non-expanding backplane with 3x SFF ports and use two separate HBAs.

 

[ims]

You might want a backplane that can has 8 SAS lanes going to the HBA, or even a non-expanding backplane with 3x SFF ports and use two separate HBAs.

Ok. Write in notepad for future.

 

[Herr_Merlin]

I have 14 working... easy..

 

[ims]

I have 14 working... easy..

ok

 

[ims]

It would have 4 SAS lanes, and all twelve disks would share that speed. Unless you plan to use solid state drives, you shouldn't feel any limitations from this, as 4x SAS lanes at 600MB/s is 2.4GB/s of bandwidth.

One last touch, 2,4 gb/s is it enough to use it for VM on VMware ESXi cluster with two host and this store isci + 10 gbe network?

 

[Herr_Merlin]

Your usually use with VMware are not streamed writes.. so usually less than 1G is enough...