Error installing freebsd on a dell perc H730p system

[simeo]

I attach two pictures of a machine with a dell perc H730p raid card. Since a while is has been working with it without any problem, but after a power outage we weren't able to recover system and we had to retrieve copies.

The problem is we can't install from a fresh freeBSD 12.1, we also tried 11.1-11.4 and 10.3 without any success.

System is now running but we had to attach hds direct to system and made a mirror zpool with ZFS.

Let me know if you need more info o try something
Thanks

 

[richardtoohey2]

Looks like something has gone wrong on the RAID controller itself - the MFI driver is possibly just reporting what it is getting told?

These are all similar messages - not looked for exactly the same as you are getting - just the general class of message/issue:

Fatal Firmware Error on Integrated PERC5/i | DELL Technologies

I have an integrated PERC5/i controller on a PE2950. The server crashed yesterday with nothing in the logs before the crash. After the server came back up, the following error was in...

www.dell.com

Fatal firmware error installing RHEL8.0 with PERC H730P | DELL Technologies

Hi, I have an R440 and R540, with a similar configuration of PERC H730P, 2x 1TB SSD in RAID1. PERC firmware is 25.5.6.0009 on both. I didn't have any issues installing RHEL8.0 on R540, but I'm ge...

www.dell.com

Dell 1950 Crashing Intermittently Event ID 2336 | DELL Technologies

I have a old PowerEdge 1950 Server that I'm trying to repurpose. I have gone through and attempted to make sure that the BIOS and any underlying hardware firmware have been updated. I'v...

www.dell.com

Search for "fatal firmware error dell perc" and there's more.

It's not OS-specific - it's the RAID controller itself that's unhappy.

 

[simeo]

I agree. In fact, we no longer buy any server with a raid controller. NO matter what the board makers say, in the end it's a software raid. It is not a "foolproof" hardware solution as many think.

Besides, as we already use in all ZFS servers we do not need a raid, we mount it via a zpool mirror. In fact it is counterproductive to mount a zpool mirror on a "hardware" raid, zfs loses a lot of information and cannot do its job correctly. (1*)

What made me doubt is the error in the controller driver, as can be seen in the image. I think the power failure did not sit well with the controller and it has not recovered, but hey, I preferred to report the error just in case.


(1*) FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS, chapter 0