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I have a very strange mashup of parts that I am trying to get working for a project. Due to a windfall from a client who was getting rid of hardware, I became the proud owner of a HP P822 controller.

I also happen to have an older Supermicro X8DAH motherboard in a case with 10 hotswapable sata drives that is running EXSI 6.5. Currently it is booting to ESXI via a memory stick and using an old Dell 6/IR controller card for a RAID 1 storage pool. I wanted to know if there is a way that I can utilize the HP P822 card in this system without the use of iLO because obviously the Supermicro board does not have it. Then I would want to make a RAID 6 array and a larger storage pool for data storage.

I have SaS to sata breakout cables running internally, and I know that I will lose some functionality because I am not using HP drives and obviously the sata drives are not going to be very fast. I am familiar with setting up Raid but I am not sure if I can run this setup without iLO to configure the array/update firmware/monitor drives. I have read some stuff about an HP Smart Start CD that I would boot to prior to booting into the OS, but I have yet to find a current version. Is what I am looking to do possible?

Also what can I do about monitoring the array? is there a manager I can use from within a windows VM or another machine? can I update firmware? can I get into the HP p822 via a keypress on startup? (there are no visual commands, but I can see the card boot)

If it helps when ESXI boots up I can see the HP controller is available, obviously there is no storage pool associated with it because I have not configured one.

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Yes, this will work, but it's a little tacky...

The controller is just a PCIe card. It'll recognize SAS drives connected to it. You'll be able to configure Arrays and Logical Drives without issue.

You will not have enclosure information, but the array controller should be able to illuminate drive LEDs (for replacement).

The ILO is not necessary and has no relationship with the array controller.

You will need to instal the HP SSA utility inside of ESXi to be able to have command-line access to the controller. You may want to install the HP offline bundle for ESXi to get sensor information inside of VMware.

For very basic config, you can use the F8 BIOS utility to create an array.

Here's the HP Offline Smart Storage Administrator bootable image: https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?swItemId=MTX_024fe3a9a125415c80dc674685

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  • ok, I will try to use the offline smart storage, and I am defiantly going to install the HP SSA utility into my ESXI. What is this F8 keypress though? during boot I am pressing the F8 key when I see the HP adapter come up, but it never takes me anywhere. Oct 24, 2017 at 17:58
  • I think I see why I can't get in with the F8 key press. Apparently HP ORCA only works with a UEFI equipped motherboards, which mine is not. Oct 26, 2017 at 22:44
  • can I request some help on the HP Offline Smart Storage Administrator bootable image? I have the VM running, but I can't seem to find the controller. Oct 27, 2017 at 4:15

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