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Raid controller not presenting bootable VD
Hi,
I have an R730 with all firmware recently updated to latest versions in an attempt to resolve this problem. I need to host an Nvidia K20 (slightly older but qualified GPGPU). I therefore have UEFI turned off
I have 2 disk drives in a mirror raid (1) and set to writeback and no read ahead (for the purposes of troubleshooting this problem).
I can boot from USB and install CentOS to the Virtual Disk but the Virtual Disk does not appear in the menu of bootable devices. If I re-enable UEFI then the disk appears in the list of bootable devices (but the GPU crashes the system before the boot - crash looks something like this: http://moufie.blogspot.com/2015/01/technology-system-detected-exception.html
I also have 3 other R730s that only have a single disk and no raid controller. They all work by simply turning off UEFI and making no other changes.
nthorne
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September 29th, 2016 08:00
Hi,
First thing I did was a bios update so I'm on 2.2.5 which should be the latest.
The 2 mirrored disks are 1.8TB 10K RPM SAS 12Gbps 4Kn 2.5in Hot-plug Hard
Drive.
The GPU did not ship with the system
The processor is E5-2660 v4
I've now narrowed the problem down to the disks. I mentioned that I had other R730 nodes that do work. Those nodes have these drives: 300GB 15K RPM SAS 12Gbps 2.5in Hot-plug Hard
Drive,3.5in. I took 2 of them out of the working systems and raided them together in my non-working system and that solves it. So I think that it is the combination of 4Kn size on the 1.8TB and UEFI turned off that confuses the bios and prevents the disks from appearing as bootable.
Now that I start google searching for the correct terms I come up with this:
http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/512e_4Kn_Disk_Formats_120413.pdf
on page 10 it confirms that 4Kn is only supported in UEFI mode.
Thanks for your time!
DELL-Josh Cr
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September 28th, 2016 14:00
Hi,
Which RAID controller is in the system? What version of CentOS are you using?
nthorne
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September 28th, 2016 15:00
PERC H730
CentOS7.2 - minimal install
DELL-Josh Cr
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September 28th, 2016 16:00
What version is the BIOS at? Updating may help with the card giving the error. http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=PFWCY&fileId=3567818204&osCode=W12R2&productCode=poweredge-r730&languageCode=en&categoryId=BI
What size is the virtual disk? Did the system ship with a GPU? What model CPUs are installed?