adding a sata controller [2x Xeon xw8600]

[hput3]

Brief hardware spec:

HP XW6600 workstation with 2x 5470 Xeon cpus at 3.33 Ghz with 32 GB ram

Briefly my intent with the hardware:

I expect to install a version of solaris (openindiana) as OS and setup a zfs file server.  I will want from 6-8 sata ports and intend to setup 3-4 mirrored (2 disc) zpools.

I am very green on hp equipment.  Or really, any real server class equipment.

I've purchased a used xw8600 workstation off ebay and found when I started examining things on the motherboard there apppear to be a lot more sata connections than I expected.  Though I haven't found specs that say how many there should be available.

This is the the 0A98h motherboard.  I see the sata ports appear to be color coded but have not been able to find enough info on that mother board to know what the colors indicate.

I'd hoped to find one of those nifty manuals on line similar to the ones from asus that have a helpful diagram showing what all the different parts are..... so far I've found nothing like that.... (maybe someone can offer a URL?)

The nearest I came was a couple of pdf files available on hp site that are a far cry from a complete diagram.

There appear to be 3 rows of sata ports, 14 ports in all, but one row has only two ports.  What appears to be the ones currently in use are at the top row. (that row has colors going from left to right ) Red Red   Grey Grey Grey Blue

The workstation has 2 cdrom which are attached to two grey ports .  Then two hdd attached to one grey and one blue port,

See the two attached images ... image1 shows top row... image2 shows the rest while I hold the sata wires up outof the way.

Can anyone tell me what I'm looking at there.... how many of those ports should actually be usable?

What does Red indicate, grey ... blue .... white.....?

I want to have at least 6-8 available sata ports.

What will I need to do to have 6-8 working sata ports?

[SDH]

In your top section you say xw6600, but all else is related to xw8600, so I assume that's a typo.  Info related to the xw8600 can be gleaned from reading up on the xw8400 and xw6600, in addition to the xw8600 itself.  Close relatives.  Attached are some reading materials for you.  Use the little forum search box up above to the left that says "Search HP Forum".... that keeps your searches specifically within this forum, where many of your answers will be found.

Above all else, update your BIOS first.  Very important.... there are some significant upgrades in there that you will want and need.  You can do that from within BIOS, or from within Windows.

The two Red SATA ports, like in the xw6600, are SATA ports that can be down-shifted for eSATA use (one or both).  In my experience with good short interconnects you can use eSATA (via a backplane SATA-to-eSATA interface) at full SATA gen II speeds, and not change those ports in BIOS.  If you'll not be using eSATA make sure they are set to the faster "internal" SATA II speeds.

These particular xw boxes all run at SATA gen II speeds, and the eSATA BIOS setting drops them to SATA gen I speeds.  You need to get into the Z620 era HP workstations to get some SATA gen III ports.

For your xw8600 Blue is your SATA boot port 0.... use that if booting off a SSD or single hard drive.

Gray and Red are your SATA 1,2,3,4,5 ports.  The white ones are SAS capable.  It's all in the manuals.  I don't use SAS at all, but if I recall correctly some of the SAS ports on the xw8400 and xw8600 motherboards can be hooked up to SATA drives and used that way.  I may be wrong on that.

See attachments.......

[SDH]

For your xw8600 here are some added documents for reference, attached.

[hput3]

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@Scott D. Harrison wrote:

In your top section you say xw6600, but all else is related to xw8600, so I assume that's a typo.  Info related to the xw8600 can be gleaned from reading up on the xw8400 and xw6600, in addition to the xw8600 itself.  Close relatives.  Attached are some reading materials for you.  Use the little forum search box up above to the left that says "Search HP Forum".... that keeps your searches specifically within this forum, where many of your answers will be found.

[...]

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Thank you for the excellent input.  And you guessed right, that `6600' was a typo.

I'm just starting on your links... (thanks again).

Do you know if I can download the "Documentation and Diagnostics" Cd that propably came with my unit when it was first purchased?

Can those be bought or downloaded somewhere...? Google finds several hits with the search terms "download Documentation and Diagnostics CD for HP xw8600" 

None of them actually contain a link to download an iso or such.

Thanks again, and back to work.

[SDH]

Never have seen one of those, but there is a diagnostic CD .iso you can download that is worth getting.  This .iso can be directly downloaded from HP, burned to a CD (bootable) and allows full diagnostic testing of the subsystems of your workstation including memory diagnostics.  The same .iso was released again 3/11 in the xw4600 driver section, and works fine on a number of different workstations above and beyond those listed in the ReadMe attached to this post.

Also, I have previously uploaded here my xw6600 BIOS settings for fastest boot times, and those will be similar to what your xw8600 would use.  The xw8600 has a SAS controller hard wired to the motherboard and does have some added BIOS settings that have been posted about here in terms of taking a full 30 seconds off your boot time (that was tested on a conventional hard drive, not a SSD type of boot drive).  That info is here under the xw8400 listing, which has SAS controller also on the motherboard.  In BIOS you can capture and save your current BIOS settings as a small CPQSETUP file onto a USB drive, and also save one of those files onto a USB drive and upload it into BIOS.  This allows BIOS cloning from one workstation to another of the same type, and is discussed in the forum under Replicated Setup.  It is available under the first BIOS tab, listed by that term.

If you're going to be hooking drives also to the SAS ports I'd think you would need to keep that SAS controller's BIOS settings unchanged, however.

To get that diagnostics iso.... google for "xw8600 drivers" and use the top HP link.  Subselect the drivers for XP Professional (the 32 bit), go to Diagnostics, and find the one for SP42052 (HP Insight Diagnostics Offline Edition).  See attached.

Scott