HPE Gen11 hardware support?

R

rainer_d

Hi,

I have trouble coming up with any information about this.

Does it work? Which hardware specifically?

Any reports from the field?



Best Regards
Rainer
 
HPE ended support for FreeBSD long time ago. In fact there was very few HP engineers which were working of providing updated drivers for HP Raid controllers for FreeBSD but after they left HP it basically end and they support to it. So things as iLO CLI and hpacucli doesn't work. The standard CISS driver have limited support to the older raid controllers but it doesn't report any events so you should monitor the raid status via iLO and you will need iLO license to be able to receive e-mail notifications.

Currently there's a group of HP Japan which are testing the HP servers with FreeBSD and they progress can be monitored here:

You may need too use google translate for that page.
 
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I know about the smartpqi driver....
In fact, I bought an OG Microsemi HBA just to be able to open a ticket and help push the latest driver into the tree (which took a really long amount of time).

The fact that the smartpqi driver is absent from this page:
www.freebsd.org

FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE Hardware Notes

FreeBSD is an operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms.
www.freebsd.org www.freebsd.org
is a bit worrying...

From the quicksecs, it seems you can buy Gen11 servers with a Gen10 entry-level HBA (which would be OK). It's unclear if the actual Gen11 HBAs are supported.

I'm trying to find out which NICs can go into the server (and thus, if those are supported).

We monitor everything via iLO anyway as we don't want to install the agents on Linux, either. We have (AFAIK) a site-license for iLO.
 
I've now got the spec-sheet:
HBA is a MR216i-p - does anyone know what driver that is? I would maybe make an educated guess that it's an OEM'ed MegaRAID HBA?

Networking is a BCM5719, which looks to be supported by bge(4)?
 
Did anyone progress on this? It seems like there is only MegaRAID on Gen11/Gen12 servers. yuripv79 Smartchip ROC were on Gen10 and are now gone. I am considering HPE MR408i-o because it seems to have the SAS3908 chips which is likely to be supported by mrsas(4). rainer_d Looking at Broadcom's ROCs: https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/raid-on-chip it it not clear what chip that is.

Copilot says that is based on SAS3916 which does support higher RAID levels, but obviously it seems to be something custom for HPE or firmware-crippled. (see https://team-it.hpe-innovation.de/p...er-kanal-sata-6gb-s-sas-12gb-s-pcie-4-0-nvme/)
 
Forgot to mention: According to HPE those controllers use the Broadcom Areo which is covered by mrsas(4):
Code: 
osipovmi@deblndw011x:~/var/Projekte/freebsd/src/sys/dev (stable/14 =)
$ grep -r MRSAS_AERO_10E .
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        {0x1000, MRSAS_AERO_10E0, 0xffff, 0xffff, "BROADCOM AERO-10E0 SAS Controller"},
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        {0x1000, MRSAS_AERO_10E1, 0xffff, 0xffff, "BROADCOM AERO-10E1 SAS Controller"},
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        {0x1000, MRSAS_AERO_10E2, 0xffff, 0xffff, "BROADCOM AERO-10E2 SAS Controller"},
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        {0x1000, MRSAS_AERO_10E3, 0xffff, 0xffff, "BROADCOM AERO-10E3 SAS Controller"},
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        {0x1000, MRSAS_AERO_10E4, 0xffff, 0xffff, "BROADCOM AERO-10E4 SAS Controller"},
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        {0x1000, MRSAS_AERO_10E5, 0xffff, 0xffff, "BROADCOM AERO-10E5 SAS Controller"},
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        {0x1000, MRSAS_AERO_10E6, 0xffff, 0xffff, "BROADCOM AERO-10E6 SAS Controller"},
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        {0x1000, MRSAS_AERO_10E7, 0xffff, 0xffff, "BROADCOM AERO-10E7 SAS Controller"},
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        case MRSAS_AERO_10E1:
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        case MRSAS_AERO_10E5:
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        case MRSAS_AERO_10E2:
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        case MRSAS_AERO_10E6:
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        case MRSAS_AERO_10E0:
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        case MRSAS_AERO_10E3:
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        case MRSAS_AERO_10E4:
./mrsas/mrsas.c:        case MRSAS_AERO_10E7:
./mrsas/mrsas.h:#define MRSAS_AERO_10E0             0x10E0
./mrsas/mrsas.h:#define MRSAS_AERO_10E1             0x10E1
./mrsas/mrsas.h:#define MRSAS_AERO_10E2             0x10E2
./mrsas/mrsas.h:#define MRSAS_AERO_10E3             0x10E3
./mrsas/mrsas.h:#define MRSAS_AERO_10E4             0x10E4
./mrsas/mrsas.h:#define MRSAS_AERO_10E5             0x10E5
./mrsas/mrsas.h:#define MRSAS_AERO_10E6             0x10E6
./mrsas/mrsas.h:#define MRSAS_AERO_10E7             0x10E7

The manpages of all LSI/Broadcom/Avago aren't really helpful regarding the supported chips.
 
rcbsdpge said:
what does this mean for HP hardware for FreeBSD. I just got my HP Z8 G4 workstation
Click to expand...
At the moment, I can't give you an authorative answer from my PoV. I will contact the Broadcom guy as well and wait for other answers.

What type of controller is in your workstation? I guess it is SATA in the PCH?
 
Michael-O said:
At the moment, I can't give you an authorative answer from my PoV. I will contact the Broadcom guy as well and wait for other answers.

What type of controller is in your workstation? I guess it is SATA in the PCH?
Click to expand...
I think SATA and sSATA or something like that - with support for NVMe and SAS drives. Something like that. Full specs here

I scoped the workstation. It can max a lot if my guesstimates are correct
 
rcbsdpge said:
I think SATA and sSATA or something like that - with support for NVMe and SAS drives. Something like that. Full specs here

I scoped the workstation. It can max a lot if my guesstimates are correct
Click to expand...
The specs are vast. I spotted: MicroSemi SmartHBA2100-4i4e SAS Controller, see: https://storage.microsemi.com/en-us...e&dn=microsemi+adaptec+smarthba+2100-4i4e.php

According to Copilot:
    • Vendor ID 0x9005 corresponds to Adaptec/Microsemi.
    • Device ID 0x2100 is specific to the SmartIOC 2100 chipset used in this HBA
which is covered by smartpqi(4).

Please double check. I have spent almost one day on the DL320 Gen11 specs. They don't have MicroSemi anymore...Broadcom is very expensive.
 
Will do. I didn't know HP and HPE are 2 separate entities now. There was a split. HPE is for enterprise-grade and the HP brand is closer to the consumer. I pulled this neat article on the difference between SAS and SATA drives

HPE Wiki on the split from HP to HPE and HP.
 
rcbsdpge said:
Will do. I didn't know HP and HPE are 2 separate entities now. There was a split. HPE is for enterprise-grade and the HP brand is closer to the consumer. I pulled this neat article on the difference between SAS and SATA drives

HPE Wiki on the split from HP to HPE and HP.
Click to expand...
Yep, HPE != HP. Many still confuse.
Same for SAS and SATA. You can use SATA drives in a SAS controller, but not the other way around. In the past couple of years I have bought these:
Enterprise - 12G SAS - SFF Drives
HPE 2.4TB SAS 12G Mission Critical 10K SFF BC 3-year Warranty 512e Multi Vendor HDD P28352-B21
HPE 1.8TB SAS 12G Mission Critical 10K SFF BC 3-year Warranty 512e Multi Vendor HDD P53562-B21
HPE 1.2TB SAS 12G Mission Critical 10K SFF BC 3-year Warranty Multi Vendor HDD P28586-B21
HPE 300GB SAS 12G Mission Critical 10K SFF BC 3-year Warranty Multi Vendor HDD P40430-B21

Not worse than SSDs back then. Even the Mixed Use Case SSDs from HPE are much more expensive.
 
We went for a Supermicro server in the end - which had a NIC that was buggy in 13.2, so I had to wait until 13.3 until I could update it....
 
FYI: We are about to order a DL320 Gen11 with Gold 6548Y+, 128 GiB RAM, 2x300 GB HDD for OS and 6x2,4 TB (RAID Z2) on HPE MR408i-o Gen11 storage controller in HBA mode. Host will run bhyve for several virtual machines, no hyper threading. Will report when the host has been provisioned how it works. This shit ain't cheap these days...
 
I've the HP DL380 Gen11 and 14.3 cannot be installed nor 15.0. The only one that actually works is FreeBSD 13.5. After the installation I've upgraded it to 14.3 and it works OK.
 
Ah, this one I know. But after installation the server works? Did you guys try to bisect between 13.5 and 14.0? I know it takes time, but might lead to a result.
 
yeah after the installation and the upgrade to 14.3 everything works OK. I thought about doing a bisect between 13.5 and 14.0 but didn't had the time. I remember this happening when Gen9 came out and I couldn't install the latest version of FreeBSD. Very strange. when it comes to iLO backwards compatibility isn't a thing and the support for FreeBSD and to some extent Linux is minimal.
 
suntzu00 said:
yeah after the installation and the upgrade to 14.3 everything works OK. I thought about doing a bisect between 13.5 and 14.0 but didn't had the time. I remember this happening when Gen9 came out and I couldn't install the latest version of FreeBSD. Very strange. when it comes to iLO backwards compatibility isn't a thing and the support for FreeBSD and to some extent Linux is minimal.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the information. We will keep in touch. As far as I can see the box won't be available before December. I will first upgrade all firmwares.

git log shows a lot of changes, but for the term 'hci' are around 200. It might be worth search there.
 
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