Plextor SSDs don't work reliably in HP DL380p Gen8 servers

We recently purchased a few HP 380p G8 servers to add some VM capacity, and decided to add a pool of SSDs to our standard build, to create a "fast" RAID 1+0 array for some of our VMs that have higher performance requirements. (e.g. log servers and dbs) Since the HP drives are super-duper expensive, we went with Plextor PX-512M5Pro SATA SSDs, since we had good luck with Plextor SSDs in our previous G7 servers.

However, in 3 out of 3 servers, 3 of the 4 drives have entered the failed state, shortly after being configured, before we even attempted to put them in use. The reliability of the failures leads me to believe it's incompatibility between the RAID controller and the drives, and when the RMA replacements arrive, I'm assuming they'll fail, too. Any tips or tricks that might help with this issue, besides just buying the HP official drives?

Solution 1:

You can't use non-HP SSDs in HP ProLiant servers like this. Just because this worked on your G7 server doesn't mean it is okay for your Gen8 ProLiant servers.

(basically, why buy enterprise gear, then cripple it with incompatible components?)

Please see:

3rd party SSD drives in HP Proliant server - monitoring drive health

or Third-party SSD solutions in ProLiant Gen8 servers

or Third-party SSD in Proliant g8?

and HP DL380p Gen8 and PCIe SSD?