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Proliant DL380 G2 - Installation

Offline TrevorNWatson

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Proliant DL380 G2 - Installation
« on: June 25, 2012, 06:22:04 PM »
Hello,

I'm attempting to install SME Server 8.0 onto an old Proliant DL380 G2 server.  I've gone through the installation a number of times (it seems that it's writing to the disk, disk activity and no errors).  When I restart the computer it always comes back to

Attempting to boot from CD
Attempting to boot from A:
Attempting to boot from hard drive C:

and sits there.

I've been downloading various versions of the SmartStart CD trying to find one that might give me a clue as to if there's something in there I need to use and have had mixed success.  I can get at the settings, but it won't let me do the server installation from the CDs (7.2 is the first one i found that goes to the server installation screen, but only has Novell Netware and Windows Operating Systems).

The RAID is set to RAID5 with 1 spare.

Has anybody had any similar issues or success loading it onto this server?

Thanks in advance,

Trevor Watson

Offline nicolatiana

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Re: Proliant DL380 G2 - Installation
« Reply #1 on: June 26, 2012, 01:51:42 PM »
Trying to install over Hardware Raid? Sata-Sas-Scsi ?

Using SmartStart cd is unuseful for SME.

Consider to wipe-out all existing raid settings (and logical volumes/partitions etc . .. ) and check your boot sequence too.

If using a raid controller try using SME software raid and configure your controller to have a logical drive for each hdd installed.

DL380 G2 should be Centos/RedHat supported.
 
Nicola
« Last Edit: June 26, 2012, 02:01:25 PM by nicolatiana »
Consulente di Smeserver.it -  Soluzioni e supporto su Sme server in Italia.

Offline Jáder

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Re: Proliant DL380 G2 - Installation
« Reply #2 on: June 26, 2012, 07:16:07 PM »
Hi

I's a bad choice to have TWO raid (Hardware RAID and SOFTWARE RAID) at same time.

If your DL380 has BIOS configurated to do RAID, you should install SME with option "noraid" on command line. Please search manual about this.

If your DL380 has no RAID, so default SME install it's ok and should work.
Just let SME install, remove CD before boot and let us to know about problems.

Jáder
...

Offline JohnG

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Re: Proliant DL380 G2 - Installation
« Reply #3 on: June 26, 2012, 07:45:49 PM »
I saw something similar with a DL360 and I think it had something to do with the bootloader (GRUB?) not being installed properly on new disks. Rather than trying to research and fix GRUB, I just installed ipcop then re-installed SME which worked for me.

Offline CharlieBrady

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Re: Proliant DL380 G2 - Installation
« Reply #4 on: June 26, 2012, 09:00:05 PM »
I's a bad choice to have TWO raid (Hardware RAID and SOFTWARE RAID) at same time.

Do you have evidence for that? AFAIK, software RAID is entirely harmless when there is only one 'disk', as there will appear to be when hardware RAID is in use. Yes, you can use 'noraid', but it doesn't make any significant difference.

Offline Jáder

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Re: Proliant DL380 G2 - Installation
« Reply #5 on: June 27, 2012, 12:08:02 AM »
There are no gain to use TWO RAID solutions same way there are no gain on use TWO AntiVirus solutions.

Worst than that... with TWO RAID solutions you have multiple points of failure... imagine what happens when a disk crash and you have TWO RAIDs different... let's say your HW think it's two RAID5 of 3 disks... and you SW (SME) think it's a RAID 1 of two disks (each one them it's HW RAID5 of 3 disks)... how many rebuild do you have (one in HW other in SW)... for what exactly ?
For this case you could use a combined RAID... RAID10/0+1/1+0/.../50/60... something like that... and using ONLY the HW or ONLY the SW.

The SW RAID MAY BE harmless...but who knows what BAD interactions it could get... even worst when it's about GRUB or ANY other boot loader.
I prefer to be on safe side and just use one of them... have seen bad things enough to learn about KISS principle ;)
...

Offline CharlieBrady

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Re: Proliant DL380 G2 - Installation
« Reply #6 on: June 27, 2012, 12:49:42 AM »
Worst than that... with TWO RAID solutions you have multiple points of failure... imagine what happens when a disk crash and you have TWO RAIDs different... let's say your HW think it's two RAID5 of 3 disks... and you SW (SME) think it's a RAID 1 of two disks (each one them it's HW RAID5 of 3 disks)... how many rebuild do you have (one in HW other in SW)... for what exactly ?
For this case you could use a combined RAID... RAID10/0+1/1+0/.../50/60... something like that... and using ONLY the HW or ONLY the SW.

You are dreaming up all sorts of hypotheticals which just do not arise. If you have hardware RAID, the SW RAID does nothing and you can ignore it.

Quote
The SW RAID MAY BE harmless...

Indeed it is.

Quote
but who knows what BAD interactions it could get...

There is no interaction.

Offline newburns

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Re: Proliant DL380 G2 - Installation
« Reply #7 on: June 27, 2012, 07:04:55 AM »
So is it safe to say that the following config is intuitive and not a waste of disk:
10 - 1tb disk @ 7200 rpm

Raid enclosure that takes the 10 1tb disk and creates 5 2tb RAID0 pairs.
SME Software RAID5 of the 5 RAID0 pairsduring installation. Thus creating a RAID5 array of RAID0 disks. (I also assume that it will be limited to 1tb disk because SME cannot format a disk over 2tb).

Is there another configuration that would be better that would give the best speed and storage space? The production server currently has 5tb used and >2tb available, so space is important.

SME 8.0
Quad 6600
8gb DDR2 800
8 TB RAID 5
Dual Gigabit NIC
I Still Don't KNOW WHAT I AM DOING. Please, don't assume I know anything about Linux or Centos, I just know hardware

Offline TrevorNWatson

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Re: Proliant DL380 G2 - Installation
« Reply #8 on: July 03, 2012, 06:12:23 PM »
I saw something similar with a DL360 and I think it had something to do with the bootloader (GRUB?) not being installed properly on new disks. Rather than trying to research and fix GRUB, I just installed ipcop then re-installed SME which worked for me.

It looks like you might have hit the nail on the head here.  It doesn't appear that GRUB is loading properly and attempting to manually put GRUB onto the drive has been a nightmare with this server. 

I tried IPCop, but it wouldn't detect the drives automatically and I didn't know how to use/what to use for the modprobe that it suggests using.  I'm going to try downloading and installing CentOS in the hopes that it would install GRUB and then let me re-install SME Server.

Offline CharlieBrady

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Re: Proliant DL380 G2 - Installation
« Reply #9 on: July 03, 2012, 08:02:15 PM »
This might help you:

http://nozell.com/blog/2004/05/08/some-tips-to-reinstall-grub-on-an-hp-proliant-server/

but you should also report your problem via the bug tracker. It should "just work". If it doesn't, something needs to be fixed. In this case, it seems that grub-install isn't working correctly.

Offline TrevorNWatson

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Re: Proliant DL380 G2 - Installation
« Reply #10 on: July 03, 2012, 09:04:45 PM »
This might help you:

http://nozell.com/blog/2004/05/08/some-tips-to-reinstall-grub-on-an-hp-proliant-server/

but you should also report your problem via the bug tracker. It should "just work". If it doesn't, something needs to be fixed. In this case, it seems that grub-install isn't working correctly.

Thanks Charlie!  Followed the steps in this blog and the server is up and running like a charm.

Offline CharlieBrady

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Re: Proliant DL380 G2 - Installation
« Reply #11 on: July 03, 2012, 10:45:16 PM »
Please be sure to report the problem you experienced, via the bug tracker.