Solved HP DL360 G9 with no HP storage controllers?

smj

smj

Lesson: Verify that what you ordered is actually what was delivered.

I've used several generations of HP Proliant servers - G5, G6, G7 - using only third-party storage controllers with ZFS. These are typically LSI 9200, 9211-8i, etc. Any HP "Smart" controllers are removed, disabled, or ignored.

Recently I've been trying to build a DL380 Gen 9 according to this playbook, and it isn't working out. I pulled the P440ar controller, replacing it with two LSI/Avago cards (SAS2008-based) and added a second drive cage. I was able to boot the FreeBSD 13-STABLE installer from a USB stick and complete installation to SAS drives attached through these controllers, no problem.

However after rebooting, the drives are not visible at the BIOS/UEFI level. Doesn't matter if I twiddle the installation details, or install CentOS 7 instead - the controllers work and the drives are visible after booting from the USB stick, but not from the BIOS/EFI. The controllers show up as generic storage controllers in some of the BIOS setup screens and are enabled, but nothing attached to them is visible when trying to add a new UEFI boot menu entry, for example.

Right now I've replaced one controller with the P440ar in "HBA mode," which makes the drives visible from the BIOS/UEFI, and the resulting FreeBSD 13 installation boots as usual.

I thought about building a USB or SD card image to load the kernel and drivers, then switch to the ZFS filesystems once the LSI controllers are usable. But I thought I'd post here first and see if anybody has already solved this particular issue...

Thanks in advance.
 
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hp server bios use to have/has ? an option to 'enable option roms'
if your add on card have a bios/bootrom this might work
 
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Thanks covacat - I've been through the BIOS settings quite a few times, but I went through again and still don't see anything like that. It's starting the Intelligent Provisioning "embedded app" now, which I haven't looked at before. If it's in there, that would be puzzling but nice. [EDIT: There are a number of things lurking in the embedded apps, but nothing that looked like it would enable controller ROMs.]

I have what purports to be a recent version of the Service Pack for Proliant for Gen 9 writing to a thumb drive, maybe a general update of BIOS and firmware will be fruitful...
 
After the first pass through SPP and updating the BIOS (2015 -> 2020) and various bits of firmware, I booted into the one-time legacy boot menu. This showed the expected output from the LSI cards -- with a firmware datestamp of 2010... I guess I saved some time by ordering cards pre-flashed to the IT firmware, but this was the first view I had of the firmware version. So, that may be a factor, and I'll have to see about updating that too.

(Still updating the HP bits, the iLO4 firmware update had a glitch of some kind.)
 
smj said:
I guess I saved some time by ordering cards pre-flashed to the IT firmware, but this was the first view I had of the firmware version.
Click to expand...

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha -- the jokes never stop with this guy...

No. I was fast enough to get into the LSI ROM this time, and the cards appear to have 11 year old IR firmware loaded.
 
Got both LSI cards updated to P20, IT firmware and both the BIOS and EFI "option ROMs." Now the controllers are showing up in the EFI setup screens correctly identified (not just a generic storage controller), and bootable disks attached to one of these cards are showing up as targets in the boot menus.
 
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