[OpenIndiana-discuss] problem adding drives HP xw8600

[Harry Putnam]

As posted in another thread here about HP xw8600 hdw.. I thought I had
it whupped... But I jumped the gun.

After putting in 2 250gb sata drives to mirror rpool... (Yeah its a
bit big... but its what I had on hand), I finally took a break in
playing with my new toy, and started trying to put the rest of the
planned disks in toward a 3-4 zpool set of mirrored zpools on matching
disks.

Note that there are some images posted at:

  http://zeus.jtan.com/~reader/vu1/disp.cgi

That might help the  conversation a bit.  

The first image (1.jpg) has a series of white arrows indicating the
top row of 6 sata ports and indicates the colors in the color
coding... Its a bit hard to see since 4 of them have cables attached
but the arrows are pointing at the underlying ports.

NOTE: (Top row of Sata ports)
>From left to right:  2 red ports, 3 drk grey ports and 1 blue port.

Underneath all the sata ports are 2 rows of SAS ports... the other 2
images in the series make it clearer.

(two of the sata ports are devoted to sata optical drives)

Since folks here had mentioned that my SAS ports could double as sata
ports my first attempt was to plug two wd black 1tb hdd into the two
SAS ports on the left.

The result was that they were not visible to the bios or OS.  I had to
change the bios setting that governs the sata setup.

The options were posted in another thread with Subject line:
   Subject: booting HP xw8600 from ISO

,----
|   SATA Emulation—Sets the SATA emulation mode with the following options:
|
|    RAID + AHCI–both the RAID and AHCI OPROMs execute. This emulation
|    mode is the default and offers the best performance and most
|    functionality.
|
|    Separate IDE Controller–offers standard SATA supports (four ports
|    only).
|
|    Combined IDE Controller–makes the SATA controller look like an IDE
|    controller and offers best IDE compatibility (two ports only).
`----

I've been running on the middle setting, since someone posted a note
from oracle saying that was the best to use.

I tried the bottom setting `Combined IDE' and the drives were still
invisible.

I tried RAID + AHCI and the machine will not boot at all.

Before I keep pounding away at all the possible parmutations with 13
ports and 3 possible options.  Please if there is anyone here that
knows how I can use those SAS ports as SATA ... please chime in.

Anyone with a good idea based on experience with similar
hardware... please  respond.  Any input will be avidly received 

-------       -------       ---=---       -------       ------- 

Right after posting this message ... I'm going to try using the two
RED sata ports... but as I recall, someone here has already mentioned
they had not be able to find a way to use those.