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Accessing PERC 4 BIOS (PowerEdge 2800)
Hello,
I just swapped out the motherboard on my PE 2800, but left the other components in place. It gets past POST, but I have a few problems getting it to boot the OS.
1) The board's BIOS doesn't seem to give me any hard drive options to boot from - just network, CD and floppy.
2) The SCSI setup detects a Seagate device in position 6 (7 being the host adapter) but it claims it's not a hard disk.
3) I can't get into the server's RAID BIOS to try and get the array back online.
I found documentation saying that these PERC 4 boards (M8938 is given on the riser board), but no prompt ever appears and just pressing it throughout the boot cycle does nothing. Near as I can figure, this is not the integrated type, as I've been told the RAID controller is built into the riser card and there is a removable "raid key".
Any idea where to start?
Thanks,
M.
DELL-Daniel My
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January 16th, 2014 10:00
Hello M
Boot into the system BIOS and look in the Integrated Devices section. You should see options for th Embedded SCSI/RAID controller. This is where you set the mode of the SCSI subsystem. You will need the both the ROMB RAID key and ROMB memory installed for the RAID option to be available. Once it is enabled you will be able to boot into the controller BIOS via CTL M during boot.
The integrated RAID controller is built into the riser. If you have an adapter in a PCI slot then that would not be the integrated version.
Thanks
MEversbergII
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January 16th, 2014 13:00
Unfortunately, there's data on the drives. I took a look at the other 2800 we have, which was purchased at the same time and should, in theory, be configured the same way. It's claiming it's set to RAID, with RAID being the option for both channels.
M.
DELL-Daniel My
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January 16th, 2014 13:00
In that case I would make sure the data is backed up. You should be able to transfer the drives from one PERC 4 to another PERC 4. The warning is if you are switching between SCSI and RAID, the two are written differently and would destroy data.
I would make sure the data is backed up and then try to boot from the drives on this system. You will likely need boot into the controller BIOS and tell it to read the configuration from the drives. It will then import the configuration from the drives to the NVRAM on the controller.
Thanks
DELL-Daniel My
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January 16th, 2014 13:00
It sounds like you are good to go. The warning is normal. Changing the way your drives communicate will affect how the data is written. Changing the SCSI controller mode will cause data to become corrupted. This is fine as long as you don't have data on the drives. You should be able to boot into the controller BIOS and create a RAID array. Then you can install the operating system.
Thanks
MEversbergII
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January 16th, 2014 13:00
Alright, now that I have that sorted, it complains about a switch from SCSI to RAID (though I went from OFF to RAID) and warns about data loss.
M.
MEversbergII
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January 17th, 2014 06:00
Ah, there's the sticky wicket. It was set up as RAID before I swapped the motherboard. Now, it gives me this warning before it prompts me anywhere to use CTRL-M to get into RAID BIOS.
What's weird is that when I denied the system when it prompted me about data loss, it did boot through to the OS loading screen shortly before it rebooted.
Going to comb through the sister server to see what is out of spec...
M.
theflash1932
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January 18th, 2014 09:00
Is the issue only the scary data loss message about switching from SCSI to RAID when enabling RAID in the BIOS? If so, that message can be ignored - any disk writes in RAID mode when the data was written in SCSI mode (and vice versa) will destroy existing data, but if it was in RAID mode before, switching to RAID will NOT destroy anything.
You would then boot to CTRL-M, Configure, View/Add, Disk view, then save on exit to permanently import the disk configuration for the RAID array.
If not, what exactly is the issue right now?