875144-B21 HPE DL180 Gen10 16 to 24SFF Upgrade Kit

HPE 875144-B21 DL180 Gen10 16 to 24SFF Overview

The HPE 875144-B21 DL180 Gen10 16 to 24SFF Hot-Plug Drive Cage Upgrade Kit category centers on an OEM upgrade solution that transforms a standard HPE ProLiant DL180 Gen10 server chassis from a 16-bay SFF (Small Form Factor) front drive configuration to a high-density 24-bay SFF hot-plug drive configuration. This upgrade kit is purpose-built for data centers, virtualization hosts, backup appliances, and high-availability server deployments that require increased drive count and flexible hot-swap capability without replacing the entire server. The category includes the drive cage assembly itself, compatible mounting hardware, drive caddies, backplane interfaces or cabling if applicable, and ancillary parts such as drive screws, rail brackets, and airflow shrouds specific to the DL180 Gen10 platform.

Compatibility

The upgrade kit is tailored for the HPE ProLiant DL180 Gen10 family. Compatibility notes typically reference chassis part numbers, factory options, and BIOS/firmware baseline requirements. When selecting a kit, ensure the server is a genuine DL180 Gen10 chassis or an HPE-supported equivalent and confirm that the existing backplane and power subsystem support the additional drive bays. Many vendors list compatibility as specific to the DL180 Gen10 (rack-optimized 2U) with factory drive bays initially configured at 8, 12, or 16 SFF; the 875144-B21 kit is aimed specifically at upgrading a 16 SFF layout to 24 SFF.

Drive and backplane interface support

The 24-bay configuration supports standard SFF (2.5") SAS and SATA HDDs and SSDs in hot-plug form factor. The upgrade kit itself primarily provides the mechanical cage and guideposts; electrical connectivity depends on the server’s backplane or an additional backplane harness. Typical supported hard drive interfaces include SAS-3 (12Gb/s), SAS-2 (6Gb/s), and SATA-III (6Gb/s); confirm controller compatibility and cabling if you mix drive types. In many cases, HPE’s integrated SmartArray controllers or third-party HBA/RAID controllers are used with the upgraded cage — always verify port counts, expander support, and firmware revisions before purchasing.

Mechanical design

Mechanical features of the upgrade cage

The HPE 875144-B21 kit is engineered to maintain chassis integrity, shock resistance, and hot-plug accessibility. Key features include guide rails and retention clips for secure drive seating, dedicated slots for 2.5" drive caddies, and mounting provisions that align with the DL180 Gen10 bezel and inner chassis. The cage is manufactured to OEM tolerances to ensure correct alignment with backplane connectors and to preserve front-panel activity LEDs and latching mechanisms.

Electrical and power planning

Power draw and PSU considerations

Adding additional drives increases aggregate power draw. A drive population composed of mechanical HDDs will have higher spin and peak current demands than SSDs. Administrators should:

• Confirm that the DL180 Gen10’s redundant power supplies have sufficient headroom for the additional drives plus the existing CPU, memory, and PCIe device load.
• Check inrush current specifications — especially important for legacy PSUs when multiple drives spin up simultaneously.
• Consider staggered spin-up policies via RAID controller firmware to avoid large simultaneous power draws at boot.

Power efficiency strategies

To optimize for power and budget:

1. Prefer enterprise NVMe or SAS SSDs where performance justifies the cost — they often offer lower sustained power usage.
2. Use HDDs with lower RPM (e.g., 7.2K versus 10K) for archival or cold tier storage to reduce consumption.
3. Ensure firmware supports staggered spin-up or implement controller settings that do so.

Performance

RAID topologies and drive distribution

With 24 SFF drive slots, architects can design more flexible RAID topologies:

• High-capacity RAID 6 or RAID 60 arrays for fault tolerance and capacity.
• Hybrid architectures with tiered storage — mix of NVMe/SAS SSDs for hot data and high-capacity HDDs for cold storage.
• Host-based software RAID solutions or hypervisor storage pools that benefit from a higher drive count for distributed parity schemes.

When implementing RAID, consider rebuild times and the impact of using high-capacity drives on rebuild duration. More drives can improve parallelism but also increase rebuild complexity if drives are very large.

Use Cases

High-density virtualization hosts

Conversion to a 24 SFF configuration is ideal for virtualization platforms (VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM) that benefit from many local drives for datastore density, guest isolation, or caching layers. Local attachment reduces latency versus networked storage for some workloads, but ensure redundancy and backups are planned accordingly.

Backup and archival appliances

For on-premises backup appliances, greater drive count enables increased retention and capacity in a single chassis. Pair large capacity HDDs with modern backup software that supports deduplication and data tiering to maximize efficiency.

Database and analytics acceleration

Using a mix of high-performance SSDs for database working sets and HDDs for historical datasets can yield a balanced cost/performance architecture. The 24-bay cage enables partitioning of hot and cold tiers within the same server.