HP ProLiant SE326M1 Storage Server

[Holt Andrei Tiberiu]

Hello folks, my name is Andrew and i am a happy FreeNas user for mor than 2 years.
I currently have 4 HP Microserver Gen 8 each with 5 HDD's wich provide me storege to my 3 HP DL 380G6 Server by 4GBS FC.
All is fine, this month i will replace the 4 Microservers with 1 box because i want more IOPS, and i will put all of my hdd's in 1 server.

Now the problem is that i wanted to do the same at my work, but i want t use what we have, and we have a HP ProLiant SE326M1. ( actualy we have 3, the other 2 are a file server and backup server running MS 2012 R2 )

It is a nice server it has 64 GB DDR3 ECC R, 6 x 2 TB SEGATE HDD and 8 x 1TB SGATE HDD, 2 x XEON L5630 CPU's and 2 x 750 watt power suply.

https://www.servershop24.de/server/...-core-2-13-ghz-16-gb-ram-292-gb-sas/a-110375/

So far so good, but here comes trubbel, HP have their P410 integrated on-board and that does not know JBOD.
I had a DELL H200 around, flash it to IT mode and surprise, it does not see my HDD's, in BIOS i can see the HP SHELF/BACKPLANE, but not the drives atached to it.

I GOOGLE'd for 3 days and found almost no information about connecting a HP SHELF/BACKPLANE to anything alse than a HP raid Card.
A also have FSC D2616 SAS RAID CARD wich is LSI SAS2108, but that model does not have IT firmware, and in the web-bios i didn't find a JBOD setting, but with this card i can see the HP SHELF/BACKPLANE and the drives.

I found some info on google that LSI 2008 chipset ( my Dell H200 ) can have up to 64 drives.

Question is, had enybody try to connect a HP SHELF/BACKPLANE to anything alse than a HP raid card and make it work in jbod?
Below is a picture of it:
https://www.servershop24.de/images/produkte/i11/110658-110658-3.jpg

I know that everybody will say buy Supermicro, but here in Romania, Supermicro is VERY RARE, and new it is very expensive, almost i can buy a netapp.

If i can manage to see all the 24 HDD's on this sistem it woud be perfect, because i could use all 3 of them.

 

[Dice]

LSI SAS2108, but that model does not have IT firmware

This is a no go.

 

[Holt Andrei Tiberiu]

This is a no go.

A no-go for the system or for the card. For the card a know that it is NO-GO.

 

[Holt Andrei Tiberiu]

OK, I managed to make it WORK!!
So all you need is a LSI 9211-8i flashed to IT mode. It was the only HBA card that was compatible with the 25 bay HP enclosure.
I have tested several HBA cards but this one was the winner, now i can use the server with all 25 HDD's in it, also in this setup, you have HOT PLUG support for HDD, SMART support.
As a note, i have installed FREENAS on 2 SW mirrored 146GB SAS drives, so that gives me 23 free bays. I do not trust USB DRIVES.

 

[Trubar]

Hello,
I am having the same idea and have a question before i buy this server.

I saw a few posts about this server being very loud when he cannot get temp readings from discs and since you changed your card i guess it cannot? What about when changing disks?

 

[DeepThought]

I am building a FreeNas server out of a HP ProLiant SE326M1 with 2 X L5520 Xeon and 24gig of ram. I am using a H220 HBA that i crossflashed with p20 9207-8i firmware. It would not see the drives through the backplane with HP firmware. Everything seems to be working correctly now. The fans stay at 46% as displayed by ilo2 as they did before I swapped out the P410 with the H220. When my new drives arrive ill see if all bays work properly. So far all I can see that doesn't work properly is the yellow/blue hard drive status LEDs . The green activity LED works properly. The drives are also not listed at all in ilo2.

 

[Holt Andrei Tiberiu]

I am building a FreeNas server out of a HP ProLiant SE326M1 with 2 X L5520 Xeon and 24gig of ram. I am using a H220 HBA that i crossflashed with p20 9207-8i firmware. It would not see the drives through the backplane with HP firmware. Everything seems to be working correctly now. The fans stay at 46% as displayed by ilo2 as they did before I swapped out the P410 with the H220. When my new drives arrive ill see if all bays work properly. So far all I can see that doesn't work properly is the yellow/blue hard drive status LEDs . The green activity LED works properly. The drives are also not listed at all in ilo2.

HDD won't be listed in ILO NEVER. Fans will always be at a minimum ~45%, even with HP Raid Card ( in my server room there are 16 degrees celsius, my dl380G6 fan usage is 6-10% ).
Regarding the FAN's, theoreticaly 25 SAS 10K HDD's make a lot of heat, so this high idle fan speed is normal, ILO asumes that you use all 25 bays, and it is ILO2 - a little primitive.
SE326M1 does not exist oficialy, it is a modified DL 180 G6.
see second picture from the link:
https://www.hp-pro.net/pressroom/articles/articles_11.html

But if you use all 25 bays, i strongly recomend you use morae RAM ( 64~128 GB )

 

[Holt Andrei Tiberiu]

Hello,
I am having the same idea and have a question before i buy this server.

I saw a few posts about this server being very loud when he cannot get temp readings from discs and since you changed your card i guess it cannot? What about when changing disks?

As i said to DeepThought, they will never be less than 40%

 

[DeepThought]

Mine is the 12 bay model. the main difference I can see between the SE326M1 and the DL180g6 is the Intel NICs. So far any hard drive I have put in it has not caused the fans to run over 49%. I ordered 10x 3TB HGST Ultrastars for it but they have not arrived yet. I have two DL380 G6 and if the drives are not HP it commands the fans to 90% . Just add a PCI card to the DL380 and even if its HP branded the fans will ramp up.

 

[Holt Andrei Tiberiu]

Mine is the 12 bay model. the main difference I can see between the SE326M1 and the DL180g6 is the Intel NICs. So far any hard drive I have put in it has not caused the fans to run over 49%. I ordered 10x 3TB HGST Ultrastars for it but they have not arrived yet. I have two DL380 G6 and if the drives are not HP it commands the fans to 90% . Just add a PCI card to the DL380 and even if its HP branded the fans will ramp up.

Do a fw update on the servere's i have more than 8 pcs of dl380 G6 and none have Hp hdd's and the fans are below 9%
And all of them have 3rd party cards in them