Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of Ian Taylor
Ian TaylorFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

asked on

DL380 Gen9 Smart Array

Hello,

I am after a HP Smart Array which has Internal and External SAS connectivity, I can only find the P844 but on the HP documentation it only says is compatible with DL380 Gen8 models - can someone recommend the equivalent or will this P844 work in a DL380 Gen9 Server?

I want to be able to connect internal storage and external storage on the same card.

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA4-7706ENW&doctype=data%20sheet&doclang=EN_US&searchquery=&cc=us&lc=en
Avatar of Zephyr ICT
Zephyr ICT
Flag of Belgium image

Hmmm ... According to this document (p4) only the p441 would fit your requirements... Not sure how it compares with the P844, couldn't immediately find it (shouldn't that be P841)?
Avatar of Ian Taylor

ASKER

Thanks - just having a look at the documentation it says it only for external storage, not internal also?
Woops, yes it is ... Sorry missed that ... Strange, so there's no controller offering both (at least not mentioned)? I'll have another look.
Seems there's not much out there, this document tells the same story as the one I already mentioned...
I'm glad its not just me :)

I'm sure the P844 would work in a Gen9 but dont want to take the chance of wasting money!
The problem is also, what if you do run into issues and want support from HP, would you get it with the P844 installed in your system?
Yup, thats another vaild point.

I cant believe HP dont do an internal\external Smart Array for the Gen9.

The P844 isnt cheap!
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Zephyr ICT
Zephyr ICT
Flag of Belgium image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
By the way, what I kinda stated above is mentioned in this document (p3):

Will a Gen8 Smart Array Controller work on a ProLiant Gen9 server?
No. HP Gen9 Smart Array Controllers are built and laid out to take advantage of the new centralized HP Smart Storage Battery solution. More importantly, Gen9 controllers perform at 12Gb and ProLiant Gen9 servers are built for 12 Gb infrastructure
Understand, that sort of answers my question then.

So now my plan has to change now, I dont want to spend lots of money on two Smart Array cards.

My thinking is to have:

1x Onboard Smart Array - Smart Array P440ar
1x HP Smart Array P441 Controller for connecting External storage or tape devices
Yeah, the onboard Smart Array will not dissapoint you, I trust you have the Flash backed cache module as well...
It supports up to 8 drives without an expander, 26 with... Hope you don't need more than 8 drives on the internal controller or you'd have to go for the expander as well.
Can you recommend a part number for the expander?

I best chuck this in!
Avatar of Member_2_231077
Member_2_231077

>1x HP Smart Array P441 Controller for connecting External storage or tape devices

Do you intend the external connector for disks or tapes? You can use a dumb HBA for tapes which is much cheaper.
It will be both
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
In my opinion and in your case that seems the best solution yes.
Thanks guys
good advice
IMHO it's asking for trouble putting disks and tape on the same controller.
Why?
Performance may be less than optimal since everything has to go over the same PCIe bus, admittedly that's historical experience with other Smart Array controllers, I haven't experienced or read of problems with this one when both tapes and disks are on it. Also it's easier to diagnose problems with a separate non-RAID adapter for the tapes.