I’ve decided to use HP P800 SAS Controllers for the HA Storage Cluster. There are several reasons why the HP P800 was picked. It supports many online management features like: Online Capacity Expansion, Online RAID LEVEL Migration, Online Stripe Size Migration, Online Spares (Global) and User Selectable Expand and Rebuild Priority. Other features like NCQ, Dual Domain Support and of course the 16 SAS 3Gb/s links with a bandwidth of 300MB/s per link. What I also really love is the position of the two BBU’s on the controller’s board. No nasty wiring for the BBU anymore. Another point is that the HP P800 works with nearly all Supermciro mainboards. HP officials support list only include HP Servers and Storage. The Memory of the HP P800 supports ECC and can be upgraded to 1GB. The version of the HP P800, which I’ve ordered comes with two BBU’s and 512MB Memory cache. I’ve ordered two controllers. One for each planed storage server.
HP P800 with 512MB cache and two BBU’s
Specification overview of the HP P800:
| Dimensions (excluding bracket) |
12.3 in x 4.4 in x 0.5 in (31.1 cm x 11.1 cm x 1.2 cm) |
| Disk Drive and Enclosure Protocol Support | 3Gb/s SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) |
| 1.5Gb/s SATA (Serial AT Attachment) | |
| SAS Connectors | 2 internal (SFF8484) x4 wide port connectors & 2 external (Mini SAS) x4 wide port connectors |
| PCI | PCI Express |
| PCI Bus Speed | x8 2.5G PCI Express (2 GB/s maximum bandwidth in each direction) |
| Memory Bus Speed | DDR2-533MHz and 72-bit wide bus |
| PCI | PCI Express and 3.3 volt PCI compatibility only |
| SAS Port Link Rate | 3G per physical link and 12G per x4 wide port connector (4 x 3G) |
| Software upgradeable Firmware | Yes |
| Cache Memory | 512 MB Read/Write ECC protection, battery-backed, and removable |
| Logical Drives Supported | Up to 32 logical drives NOTE: Supports greater than 2 TB logical drives. |
| Maximum Capacity | 108TB (108 x 1TB SATA 3.5″ MDL HDD) |
| Memory Addressing | 64-bit, supporting servers memory space greater than 4 GB |
| RAID Support | RAID 6 (Advanced Data Guarding) RAID 5 (Distributed Data Guarding) RAID 1+0 (Striping & Mirroring) RAID 1 (Mirroring) RAID 0 (Striping) |
| Upgradeable Firmware | 4-MB flashable ROM with redundant firmware images |
Also with the HP P800 SAS controller a bounch of SAS SFF8484 cables arrived. Those cables will be used inside the system to connect the controller with the backpanels.
SAS SFF8484
