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It’s a summarising memo from the last Saturday.
What supposed to be slowish disk, actually was dead drive on array.
Thanks for the supplier, the entire collection of SAS drives was just waiting to be installed.

It’s possible to configure RAID adapter from the BIOS stage, but it’s more interesting to configure it on the live system. What you need is configuration tools for the adapter card. And they are called “hpacucli”. Ok, ‘CLI” stands for “Command Line Interface”, “hp” is too obvious. “A” could be for “array”. What “cu” stands for?

Debian repository is at http://downloads.linux.hp.com/SDR/downloads/ManagementComponentPack/pool/non-free/.

Get it, install and read on.

Run “hpacucli”, it should be located in /usr/sbin.

To get information on installed RAID cards, use

ctrl all show

The utility can warn you on the recommended firmware upgrade and will print the controller(s) information:

ctrl all show

FIRMWARE UPGRADE REQUIRED: A firmware update is recommended for this controller
to prevent rare potential data write errors on a
RAID 1 or RAID 1+0 volume in a scenario of
concurrent background surface analysis and I/O write
operations. Please refer to Customer Advisory
c01587778 which can be found at hp.com.

FIRMWARE UPGRADE REQUIRED: A firmware update is recommended for this controller
to prevent rare potential data write errors on a
RAID 1 or RAID 1+0 volume in a scenario of
concurrent background surface analysis and I/O write
operations. Please refer to Customer Advisory
c01587778 which can be found at hp.com.

Smart Array E200i in Slot 0 (Embedded) (sn: xxxxxxxxx )
Smart Array P400 in Slot 6 (sn: yyyyyyyyyyyyyy)

Now, there are controllers, one on slot 0 ant the other one in slot 6.
Let’s query the second one:

=> ctrl slot=6 show

Smart Array P400 in Slot 6
Bus Interface: PCI
Slot: 6
Serial Number: nnnnnnnnnnnn
Cache Serial Number: nnnnnnnnnnn
RAID 6 (ADG) Status: Enabled
Controller Status: OK
Hardware Revision: D
Firmware Version: 4.06
Rebuild Priority: Medium
Expand Priority: Medium
Surface Scan Delay: 15 secs
Surface Scan Mode: Idle
Post Prompt Timeout: 0 secs
Cache Board Present: True
Cache Status: OK
Cache Ratio: 25% Read / 75% Write
Drive Write Cache: Disabled
Total Cache Size: 256 MB
Total Cache Memory Available: 208 MB
No-Battery Write Cache: Disabled
Cache Backup Power Source: Batteries
Battery/Capacitor Count: 1
Battery/Capacitor Status: OK
SATA NCQ Supported: True

This is the controller itself. It holds physical drives, and physical drives creates volumes, where your precious information is stored.
Let’s query physical drives:

ctrl slot=6 physicaldrive all show

Smart Array P400 in Slot 6

array A
physicaldrive 1I:1:1 (port 1I:box 1:bay 1, SAS, 2 TB, OK)
physicaldrive 1I:1:2 (port 1I:box 1:bay 2, SAS, 2 TB, OK)
physicaldrive 1I:1:3 (port 1I:box 1:bay 3, SAS, 2 TB, OK)
physicaldrive 1I:1:4 (port 1I:box 1:bay 4, SAS, 2 TB, OK)

array B
physicaldrive 2I:1:5 (port 2I:box 1:bay 5, SATA, 160 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 2I:1:6 (port 2I:box 1:bay 6, SATA, 160 GB, OK)

So, there are 2 arrays, “A” and “B”, created from SAS and SATA drives. Each drive has its physical location, denoted in columns. As the server holds internal drives only, the “box” section of the drive address indicates it by “I” suffix. There is only one drive box in the server, consisting of drive bays.

Let’s query physical drive:

ctrl slot=6 physicaldrive 1I:1:3 show

Smart Array P400 in Slot 6
array A
physicaldrive 1I:1:3
Port: 1I
Box: 1
Bay: 3
Status: OK
Drive Type: Data Drive
Interface Type: SAS
Size: 2 TB
Rotational Speed: 7200
Firmware Revision: 0004
Serial Number: Z…………….V
Model: SEAGATE ST32000645SS
PHY Count: 2
PHY Transfer Rate: 3.0Gbps, Unknown

Let’s query logical drive:

ctrl slot=6 logicaldrive all show

Smart Array P400 in Slot 6
array A
logicaldrive 1 (5.5 TB, RAID 5, OK)

array B
logicaldrive 2 (149.0 GB, RAID 1, OK)

And for logical drive “2”:

ctrl slot=6 logicaldrive 2 show

Smart Array P400 in Slot 6
array B
Logical Drive: 2
Size: 149.0 GB
Fault Tolerance: RAID 1
Heads: 255
Sectors Per Track: 32
Cylinders: 38298
Strip Size: 128 KB
Full Stripe Size: 128 KB
Status: OK
Caching: Enabled
Unique Identifier: 600508B1001044395355533048370004
Disk Name: /dev/cciss/c0d1
Mount Points: None
Logical Drive Label: A1525E6BP61630D9SUS0H7BD3B
Mirror Group 0:
physicaldrive 2I:1:5 (port 2I:box 1:bay 5, SATA, 160 GB, OK)
Mirror Group 1:
physicaldrive 2I:1:6 (port 2I:box 1:bay 6, SATA, 160 GB, OK)
Drive Type: Data

In the case you need to create a new logical drive, use:

ctrl slot=6 create type=ld drives=2I:1:5,2I:1:6 raid=1

By the way:
HP tells only hard drives up to 500 GB capacity are supported on P400 controller on DL 350 / 380 G5 box;
You can use SATA drives on SAS controller, but it’s impossible to use SAS drives on SATA controller.