Today we are going to work on an HPE ProLiant DL20 Gen9 server. After the initial installation, I was using an SD card as boot media but I still had some Delock SATADOMs laying around from my older lab servers that were replaced. So it was time to improve the performance of the boot media in the servers. In this blog post, I am explaining in detail the SATADOM installation in an HPE ProLiant DL20 Gen9.

So what are the advantages compared to an SD card:

• VMware ESXi boot time about 50% faster
• VMware ESXi upgrade time about 70% faster
• Inventory performance (very noticeable when clicking through the VMware vCenter or VMware ESXi web GUI)
• The overall stability of the host, this because of the “high” failure rate of the SD card.

The summary of advantages is based on my own comparison between SD cards en SATADOMs in my ESXi Hosts in my Home Lab.

Delock SATADOM Specifications

Here are the specifications of the Delock Satadom devices I am using for both HPE ProLiant DL20 Gen9 servers. Here are some tips about what I have learned so far… I bought them in 2018 so they are not brand new anymore:

• Buy them a little bit bigger because of the future proof > minimal 32GB I would suggest.
• Verify before buying if you need the vertical or horizontal model (rack model server go for horizontal / tower model server no really important).

So here are the specifications from the Delock website:

Item	Value
Vendor	Delock
Type	SATA 6 Gb/s Flash Module 16 GB vertical
Part nr	54655
Capacity	16 GB
Interface	SATA 6 Gb/s, SATA 3 Gb/s, SATA 1.5 Gb/s
Performance	460 MB/s read – 160 MB/s write
Power usage	1.0 W max. (5V x 200mA)

SATADOM Installation

So now it is time to install the device on the server. Of course, it is a little more complicated in a small half-size rack server. For example, there are no Molex power connections available by default. So in the end the cable kit is almost more expensive than the device itself. The preferred option should be to find an HPE cable kit, not sure which one you will need. So after some thinking and looking into the server I came up with the following solution to just plugin the SATADOM.

At first, I needed to find a SATA port on the motherboard. Both ports are available in my case but I used the one that is normally used for the DVD ROM drive number 14 (see the image from the HPE manual).

The storage device itself can be placed in the space of the storage controller battery pack. Both of my machines do not have the expensive storage controller option. Only the onboard default controller. So the space is completely empty and an easily accessible location for the SATADOM.

The power is the most difficult one. I ended up with converters to into the power connection from the storage backplane (keep in mind my server has no internal storage except the boot device (the SATADOM in this post…) If you have your storage filled with SSDs or HDDs you need to figure out a new solution where to get the power from. I have read something about a power kit for the DVD ROM for example. I have never seen it on a picture or in a server so I do not know which connectors are in that cable kit but it might be an option.

To make some more sense and pictures explain more than words… Here is a gallery with some pictures of the SATADOM installation:

DL20 Gen 9 BIOS Settings

After the physical installation, it was time to set up the BIOS. To be honest it was quite easy compared to the HPE Gen8 where I had a lot of problems because of the ports and bios settings.

Here are two screenshots. The first one is the activation of the internal storage controller. Note: make sure you power cycle the machine before the SATADOM is detected. After the power cycle, the VMware ESXi installer should detect the SATADOM when trying to install VMware ESXi.

After this point, the SATADOM installation is completed. Just continue your normal procedures and put your host into production when you are done.

Wrap-up

So that is it for today…! I hope it was useful for other people and interesting to read. Keep in mind this blog post was focused on the HPE ProLiant DL20 Gen9 but I think the procedure will be quite identical to other HPE Gen9 servers. The most difficult part will always be the cabling and after that, the BIOS settings to get the device detected correctly.

So far my hosts have been running for about 40+ days without any issues and are working perfectly fine. If you got additional questions or remarks please respond in the comment section below. Thanks for reading my blog post and see you next time.

This time I decided to do a blog post about the HPE Smart Array RAID controllers with their wonderful ssacli tool. The tooling of HPE is very powerful because you can online manage a VMware ESXi host and migrate for example from a RAID 1 volume to a RAID 10 without downtime or change the read and write cache ratio.

So far as I know I haven’t seen an identical tool yet from the other server hardware vendors like Cisco, Dell EMC, IBM, and Supermicro. The main difference has always been that the HPE tool can perform the operation live without downtime. 

So far as I can remember it has been there for ages. It was already available for VMware ESX 4.0 and is still available in VMware ESXi 6.7. So thumbs-up for HPE :).

Let’s talk about controller support. The tool supports the most HPE SmartArray controllers over the last 10 to 15 years, for example, the Smart Array P400 was released in 2005 and is still working fine today.

Here is an overview of supported controllers:

• HPE Smart Array P2XX
• HPE Smart Array P4XX
• HPE Smart Array P7XX
• HPE Smart Array P8XX

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HPE SSACLI – Location

In case you are using the HPE VMware ESXi custom images. The tool is already pre-installed when installing ESXi. The tool is installed as a VIB (vSphere Installable Bundle). This means it can also be updated with vSphere Update Manager.

Over the years the name of the HPE Storage Controller Tool has been changed and so has the location. Here is a list of locations that have been used for the last ten years for VMware ESXi:

# Location VMware ESXi 4.0/4.1/5.0
/opt/hp/hpacucli/bin/hpacucli

# Location VMware ESXi 5.1/5.5/6.0
/opt/hp/hpssacli/bin/hpssacli

# Location VMware ESXi 6.5/6.7
/opt/smartstorageadmin/ssacli/bin/ssacli

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HPE SSACLI – Examples

I have collected some screenshots over the years. Screenshots were taken by doing maintenance on VMware ESXi servers. The give you an idea what valuable information can be shown.

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HPE SSACLI – Abréviation

All commands have a short name to reduce the length of the total input provided to the ssacli tool:

### Shortnames:
- chassisname = ch
- controller = ctrl 
- logicaldrive = ld
- physicaldrive = pd 
- drivewritecache = dwc
- licensekey = lk

### Specify drives:
- A range of drives (one to three): 1E:1:1-1E:1:3
- Drives that are unassigned: allunassigned

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HPE SSACLI – Status

To view the status of the controller, disks or volumes you can run all sorts of commands to get information about what is going on in your VMware ESXi server. The extensive detail is very useful for troubleshooting and gathering information about the system.

# Show - Controller Slot 1 Controller configuration basic
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 show config

# Show - Controller Slot 1 Controller configuration detailed
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 show detail

# Show - Controller Slot 1 full configuration
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 show config detail

# Show - Controller Slot 1 Status
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 show status

# Show - All Controllers Configuration
./ssacli ctrl all show config

# Show - Controller slot 1 logical drive 1 status
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 ld 1 show status

# Show - Physical Disks status basic
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 pd all show status

# Show - Physical Disk status detailed
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 pd all show status

# Show - Logical Disk status basic
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 ld all show status

# Show - Logical Disk status detailed
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 ld all show detail

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HPE SSACLI – Creating

Creating a new logical drive can be done online with the HPE Smart Array controllers. I have displayed some basic examples.

# Create - New single disk volume
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 create type=ld drives=2I:0:8 raid=0 forced

# Create - New spare disk (two defined)
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 array all add spares=2I:1:6,2I:1:7

# Create - New RAID 1 volume
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 create type=ld drives=1I:0:1,1I:0:2 raid=1 forced

# Create - New RAID 5 volume
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 create type=ld drives=1I:0:1,1I:0:2,1I:0:3 raid=5 forced

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HPE SSACLI – Adding drives to logical drive

Adding drives to an already created logical drive is possible with the following commands. You need to perform two actions: adding the drive(s) and expanding the logical drive. Keep in mind: make a backup before performing the procedure.

# Add - All unassigned drives to logical drive 1
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 ld 1 add drives=allunassigned

# Modify - Extend logical drive 2 size to maximum (must be run with the "forced" flag)
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 ld 2 modify size=max forced

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HPE SSACLI – Rescan controller

To issue a controller rescan, you can run the following command. This can be interesting for when you add new drives in hot swap bays.

### Rescan all controllers
./ssacli rescan

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HPE SSACLI – Drive Led Status

The LED status of the drives can also be controlled by the ssacli utility. An example is displayed below how to enable and disable a LED.

# Led - Activate LEDs on logical drive 2 disks
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 ld 2 modify led=on

# Led - Deactivate LEDs on logical drive 2 disks
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 ld 2 modify led=off

# Led - Activate LED on physical drive
./ssacli ctrl slot=0 pd 1I:0:1 modify led=on

# Led - Deactivate LED on physical drive
./ssacli ctrl slot=0 pd 1I:0:1 modify led=off

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HPE SSACLI – Modify Cache Ratio

Modify the cache ratio on a running system can be interesting for troubleshooting and performance beanchmarking.

# Show - Cache Ratio Status
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 modify cacheratio=?

# Modify - Cache Ratio read: 25% / write: 75%
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 modify cacheratio=25/75

# Modify - Cache Ratio read: 50% / write: 50%
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 modify cacheratio=50/50

# Modify - Cache Ratio read: 0% / Write: 100%
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 modify cacheratio=0/100

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HPE SSACLI – Modify Write Cache

Changing the write cache settings on the storage controller can be done with the following commands:

# Show - Write Cache Status
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 modify dwc=?

# Modify - Enable Write Cache on controller
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 modify dwc=enable forced

# Modify - Disable Write Cache on controller
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 modify dwc=disable forced

# Show - Write Cache Logicaldrive Status
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 logicaldrive 1 modify aa=?

# Modify - Enable Write Cache on Logicaldrive 1
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 logicaldrive 1 modify aa=enable

# Modify - Disable Write Cache on Logicaldrive 1
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 logicaldrive 1 modify aa=disable

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HPE SSACLI – Modify Rebuild Priority

Viewing or changing the rebuild priority can be done on the fly. Even when the rebuild is already active. Used it myself a couple of times to lower the impact on production.

# Show - Rebuild Priority Status
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 modify rp=?

# Modify - Set rebuildpriority to Low
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 modify rebuildpriority=low

# Modify - Set rebuildpriority to Medium
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 modify rebuildpriority=medium

# Modify - Set rebuildpriority to High
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 modify rebuildpriority=high

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HPE SSACLI – Modify SSD Smart Path

You can modify the HPE SDD Smart Path feature by disabling or enabling. To make clear what the HPE SDD Smart Path includes, here is a official statement by HPE: 

“HP SmartCache feature is a controller-based read and write caching solution that caches the most frequently accessed data (“hot” data) onto lower latency SSDs to dynamically accelerate application workloads. This can be implemented on direct-attached storage and SAN storage.”

For example, when running VMware vSAN SSD Smart Path must be disabled for better performance. In some cases worse the entire vSAN disk group fails.

# Note: This command requires the array naming type like A/B/C/D/E

# Modify - Enable SSD Smart Path
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 array a modify ssdsmartpath=enable

# Modify - Disable SSD Smart Path
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 array a modify ssdsmartpath=disable

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HPE SSACLI – Delete Logical Drive

Deleting a logical drive on the HPE Smart Array controller can be done with the following commands.

# Delete - Logical Drive 1
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 ld 1 delete

# Delete - Logical Drive 2
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 ld 2 delete

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HPE SSACLI – Erasing Physical Drives

In some cases, you need to erase a physical drive. This can be performed with multiple erasing options. Also, you can stop the process.

Erase patterns available:

• Default
• Zero
• Random_zero
• Random_random_zero

# Erase physical drive with default erasepattern
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 pd 2I:1:1 modify erase

# Erase physical drive with zero erasepattern
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 pd 2I:1:1 modify erase erasepattern=zero

# Erase physical drive with random zero erasepattern
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 pd 1E:1:1-1E:1:3 modify erase erasepattern=random_zero

# Erase physical drive with random random zero erasepattern
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 pd 1E:1:1-1E:1:3 modify erase erasepattern=random_random_zero

# Stop the erasing process on phsyical drive 1E:1:1
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 pd 1E:1:1 modify stoperase

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HPE SSACLI – License key

In some cases a licence key needs to be installed on the SmartArray storage controller to enable the advanced features. This can be done with the following command:

# License key installation
./ssacli ctrl slot=1 licensekey XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

# License key removal
./ssacli ctrl slot=5 lk XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX delete 

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Related sources

A couple of interesting links related to the HPE Storage Controller tool for VMware ESXi:

• SSACLI – Download Page
• VMware ESXi HPE Custom Images