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December 18th, 2018 09:00
Selecting default boot drive in R740XD server
I am trying to install CentOS 7.6 to a R740XD server. The server has eight 1 terabyte drives in the front bay, and two 600 gig drives in the back bay. I want to configure the two 600 gig drives in a RAID 1 configuration and install the OS to that drive, and configure the eight 1 terabyte drives in a RAID 6 configuration to use as data storage. I configured the RAID 1 and RAID 6, installed the OS to the RAID 1 drive, rebooted, and got an error about no OS installed. It was looking for an OS on the RAID 6 drive, so it appeared that the BIOS was seeing the RAID 6 as the first drive in the system, and failing when no OS was found there. I removed the RAID 6 configuration, installed the OS to the RAID 1, and the system booted correctly, but after configuring the RAID 6 again, it tried to boot from that drive, rather than the RAID 1, and failed. I tried to edit the boot sequence to have it choose the RAID 1 as the first device, but the BIOS only sees the RAID controller as a single device, not 2 separate drives. The PERC controller is a R740P-Mini. I'm using legacy BIOS, not UEFI. How can I force the system to recognize the RAID 1 as the first hard drive, and not the RAID 6? Thanks
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Dell-DylanJ
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December 18th, 2018 09:00
Hi Phil,
I'm in the process of grabbing the CentOS 7.6 image to test myself, but you can toggle the specific RAID volume you want to make bootable from the device settings menu and selecting the PERC. Considering this is BIOS boot, you may want to look for Control + R and move over to "Controller Management." I believe the boot VD is in the bottom left portion of that screen.
Phil.e
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December 18th, 2018 09:00
Also, to add some info that might be relevant, in the initial menus of the RAID configuration, it asks you to choose either a Microsoft or Linux RAID. Microsoft is checked by default, but it wouldn't let me choose "Linux", although later on in the configuration menus it gave you a drop down list to choose from several different OSes to install.
I'm trying to install CentOS 7.6, but seemed to have better luck choosing the "any other operating system" than choosing "Redhat 7.5".
Phil.e
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December 18th, 2018 12:00
I was trying to configure the RAID through the lifecycle controller. It appeared that every time I tried to create a 2nd RAID config in the lifecycle controller, it blew away whatever existing RAID was there.
I tried configuring the RAID through the BIOS instead, in "device settings" I think it was, rebooted, and the original RAID 1 where I'd previously installed the OS still had everything on it and it booted into the OS no problem.
So it looks like it's booting correctly, I got the LVMs configured on the RAID 6, and it looks hunky dory now.
Thanks for the help
Dell-DylanJ
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December 18th, 2018 13:00
Glad to hear it, Phil. On a slight sidenote - the LCC is meant to deploy a single VD. It'll erase previous VDs each time. When you use that wizard, you either need to A) only create one VD for the deployment, and create the other virtual disks later, or B) create the virtual disks outside the OS deployment wizard of the LCC. I've seen this catch a number of folks.