OT Hardware Issue: HP Controller To 3rd Party RAID

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Hi, folks,

Got an old HP box with a P800 Smart Array controller. The HP RAID box plugged into it’s failing, and we got a new JetStor. Anyone know if we can just plug the JetStor in and set it to passthrough, or if we have to use the P800’s firmware to set up the RAID, or other gotchas?

I *think* we could use the RAID boxes firmware to build the RAID, but last resort would be passthrough, and Linux RAID.

mark

13 thoughts on - OT Hardware Issue: HP Controller To 3rd Party RAID

  • I’m not familiar with JetStor, but a P800 is a older high end SAS raid controller that expects to talk to individual SAS or SATA drives. you can manage it with hpssacli from CentOS.

  • I have the P822. It has no JBOD or RAID 0. hpacucli works with CentOS
    7.0, but is broken on 7.1 — it cannot find the controller.

    Jack

  • Jack Bailey wrote:

    JetStor, from AC&NC, is a *real* nice solid line of RAID appliances… and esp. when you get to the bigger ones, runs half or a third the price that NetApp, HP, or Dell RAID boxes run, literally. Really reliable hardware –
    we’ve got some that have been running for well over six years with no troubles (other than an occasional dead drive). (No, I’m not getting any kickbacks from them – I really like their hardware.)

    Can it do RAID 6?

    mark

  • on many of those P4/P8 series raid cards, raid6 support is an extra cost option, but once its enabled for a given card, it continues to work on that card even if its moved. The P420’s I have support raid0 (stripe)…

    I googled JetStor, and saw a whole lineup of NAS/SAN boxes that support NFS, ISCSI, etc. these wouldn’t work with a raid card like a P800, but a SAS expansion tray from a JetStor should work if direct connected to the SmartArray card… a JetStor that has its own embedded raid controller with SAS host connectivity won’t work with a hardware raid card like a P800, you would instead want a simple HBA card, such as a HP
    H221 Host Bus Adapter

  • John R Pierce wrote:

    I have no idea – we got these from another Institute, and they’re old.

    My last resort might be to use one of the other controller cards, maybe single-path the existing one, until the budget opens up….

    mark

  • I think the FIRST thing you need to determine, WHAT JetStor do you have, and what is its host connection ? All the JetStor boxes I saw in a quick look were Ethernet connected NAS/SAN boxes.

  • John R Pierce wrote:

    No. I’m the one who got the quote and set up the order for my managers, and I know what it’s got: the ethernet connection is to the internal webserver to manage the RAID. the 712S I have is dual-path SAS for data.

    mark

  • then yeah, you’ll need a plain SAS2 external HBA card. If your server is older, with PCI-Express v1 or v2, then a LSI 9211-8e or similar would be fine (IBM M1015 are a common cheap OE version of the same thing), as long as you flash that to be in “IT” (Initiator-Target) mode as they usually come in IR (Integrated Raid). If the server is PCI-Express v3, then you’ll want a newer card based on the LSI 2308 chip, such as the HP
    H221 I mentioned)

  • John R Pierce wrote:

    It’s an old box, a DL580 G5. And we didn’t get the card with the RAID. I
    suppose I can single path each RAID from the PERC H800, until budgets open up.

    mark

  • John R Pierce wrote:

    Sorry, it’s got a PERC 400, a PERC 800 (I think – lspci shows both as a MegaRAID 2108/Liberator – I’m remembering from the reboot the other day),
    *and* an HP 800.

    mark