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Technical white paper | HP Z840 Workstation

Storage congurations and RAID

The HP Z840 Workstation includes a 2 port, 6 Gb/s Intel® SATA RAID controller

(SATA) and a secondary 4 port, 6 Gb/s Intel® SATA RAID controller (sSATA). The

HP Z840 additionally includes an 8 port 6 Gb/s LSI® SAS RAID controller

Storage Features

Controller interfaces and supported drive types

The controllers support the following drive types and max link speeds:

Controller Number of ports Max link speed Interface type Drives supported**

SATA 2 6 Gb/s SATA SSD, SED, HDD, and ODD

sSATA 4 6 Gb/s SATA SSD, SED, HDD, and ODD

SAS 8 6 Gb/s SATA or SAS* SSD, SED, HDD, and ODD

* RAID arrays can only be created with drives of the same interface type. Mixed SAS and SATA RAID congurations are not allowed.

** Some encryption software used with SED drives requires that SATA emulation mode be set to AHCI.

RAID Levels

The RAID levels supported are shown in the table below:

Controller Number of ports RAID levels Max RAIDs

SATA 2 0, 1 1

sSATA 4 0, 1, 5, 10 2

SAS 8 0, 1, 1E, 10 2

Option ROM Launch Policy

In the Pre-OS environment, HP Workstations can use either Option ROM (OROM) or a Unied Extensible Firmware

Interface (UEFI) driver for conguration and management of the RAID controllers. The default shipping conguration is

set to All Legacy OROM. This can be changed in BIOS Setup under Advanced > Option ROM Launch Policy. Select the

desired Option ROM Launch Policy from the pull down menu.

The OROM or UEFI driver is not available when the SATA or sSATA controllers are set to AHCI.

When the Option ROM Launch Policy is set to All Legacy, the SATA and sSATA OROM will only display at power on if

there are two or more RAID capable devices attached to the controller, or a single device is attached that contains RAID

metadata. In the later case, the OROM will show that the RAID is failed or degraded.

The LSI SAS OROM will always display when the Option ROM Launch Policy is set to All Legacy.

When the Option ROM Launch Policy is set to UEFI, the legacy OROM will not display and management of RAID can be

performed in 3rd Party Option ROM Management from the BIOS Startup Menu.

Controller Enable/Disable

The SATA, sSATA, and SAS controllers can be Disabled or Enabled individually from the BIOS menu under Advanced

> Device Congurations. Select Enable or Disable from the pull down menu for the controller that you would like to

Enable or Disable.

HP Z840 Workstation User Manual

Questions and Answers: