HP Smart Array controllers don't fail often. Typically failure is sudden and not something that degrades over time.
Either way, you can run offline diagnostics on the array by booting the HP SmartStart DVD included with the server and running the HP Array Diagnostics Utility (ADU).
You didn't indicate the model or generation of your server or the RAID controller (those things are helpful), but the linked DVD image should cover most recent HP systems.
As far as running an online stress test, the stress utility is good for that purpose.
You could use hping to generate the traffic. But you'd be better off trying to actually replicate the real-world load.
hping Examples
Send TCP SYN packets to port 0 on host example.com (note that hping will increment the source port by 1 for each packet sent):
hping example.com -S -V
Send TCP SYN packets to port 443 on host example.com:
hping example.com -S -V -p 443
Send TCP packets to port 443 on host example.com with the SYN + ACK flags set:
hping example.com -S -A -V -p 443
Send TCP packets to port 443 on host example.com with the SYN + ACK + FIN flags set:
hping example.com -S -A -F -V -p 443
Send TCP SYN packets every 5 seconds to port 443 on host example.com:
hping example.com -S -V -p 443 -i 5
Send TCP SYN packets every 100,000 microseconds (i.e. every 0.1 second or 10 per second) to port 443 on host example.com. Note that verbose has been removed:
hping example.com -S -p 443 -i u100000
Send TCP SYN packets every 10,000 microseconds (i.e. every 0.01 second or 100 per second) to port 443 on host example.com:
hping example.com -S -p 443 -i u10000
Send TCP SYN packets every 10,000 microseconds (i.e. every 0.01 second or 100 per second) to port 443 on host example.com. Stop after 500 packets:
hping example.com -S -p 443 -i u10000 -c 500
Best Answer
If you are just looking at doing raw TCP/UDP packets (network testing) I would look at iperf. It supports both UDP and TCP.
You set it up on both sides of the gateway, one will act as the client and the other the server.