Hello,
I was trying to install Solari 11.4 on Dell PowerEdge R740. I tried with all RAID type and every time it complained about "Disk Not found". Later I found that it has PERC H740P RAID Controller Card. But only PERC H730P is supported for Solaris 11.
Now one option is, to contact Sales team and ask them to replace our existing PERC H740P with PERC H730P card. It will be a work of some efforts, with the involvement of management.
Other way I can think is, just remove the card and connect cable directly. Later I can do software RAID in ZPOOL on OS level. Does somebody know, if this will be a working way?
In T5220, I removed SAS controller card in sparc machine and it worked well. But I am not sure about Dell machine. I need to drive to another city, so I want to make sure in advance if this would work.
Any suggestions please !!!
Yes, well, the main difference between the PERC H730p and the PERC H740p was that on the H740p Dell, for some reason best known to them, removed standard HBA (Host Bus Adapter) support so not allowing the configuration of non-RAID disks.
After much complaint they have now released a firmware upgrade implementing HBA mode and, indeed, an enhanced HBA mode (see the documentation).
Therefore it depends on what you are trying to do exactly ie, how many and how big RAID arrays you need, but maybe to just get Solaris 11 running on the box you might just need to upgrade the PERC RAID controller firmware to the latest version.
I upgraded firmware of PERC H740P Adapter to 50.5.1-2818, which should include eHBA support.
Then I tried to put 2 disks in RAID 1 and in second attempt, RAID 0 and selected just one disk. In both cases, it is same behavior.
"No disks found. Additional device drivers may be needed."
If I go ahead and press option 3, for shell. I can see device entries in /dev/dsk, but nothing in format output.
Remove the card and use zpool mirroring for disks - check if that is possible.
Ask Oracle, if they plan to support it in near future and when, plan accordingly.
I would suggests option two in general, but since you paid for it, you might want to replace it with a working model for your operating system - option one.
I created a case with Dell and Engineer confirmed that only H730P PERC is documented as supported by Solaris 11.4, but no mention of H740p PERC. So he can't say if H740p PERC will work, even after upgrading firmware to 50.5.1-2818
Tomorrow I will talk to Sales guy, if they can replace H740P PERC with H730P PERC
IMHO, if you've upgraded the PERC firmware to allow non-raid disks (HBA node) then you should configure at least one disk as non-raid to test. I wouldn't expect any RAID arrays to be recognised whether RAID0 or RAID1 without an appropriate driver.
Yes, you will always see disk nodes in /dev/dsk because you have booted from the install media and you are seeing the generic ones on there. As per my previous post, you should now be able to configure non-raid disk(s) on the PERC which should then appear in the 'format' command list. If you see that then you are good to go.
When I boot in Dell Lifecycle Controller (after pressing F10), I don't see any option to bypass RAID. If I click on "Deploy OS", it goes through RAID option and there I have to select something from RAID0 to RAID60.
How can I bypass it?
I haven't looked at the full documentation (although I can do) but I suspect the board is not in HBA (or enhanced HBA) mode. Do you know how to change that? Or do we need to find out?
Instead of saying "Drive not found", this time it says "Oracle Solaris cannot be installed on any disk". Now talking to Dell sales guys, to replace RAID controller card.
So even if I selected to choose all disk in setup, format command always shows these 2 entries. First one of them could be virtual image of Solaris iso.
If I go with option 2, for additional drivers, it shows below and it wouldn't install driver -
As I indicated before, I am not familiar with a H740p PERC, but I would still suggest that the PERC is not in HBA node (or enhanced HBA node). In HBA node, non-raid disks should be able to be passed through to the host with generic drivers (from the distribution media) and not need specific (raid controller) drivers.
Having said that, something that jumps out at me from your last post is that the box is seeing 8 QLogic QL41000 adapters. Does it have 8 ethernet interfaces? If not that looks like a classic address bus problem. It should only see the number of QL41000's that are in there otherwise you have an address bus issue (look for board jumpers set wrong, BIOS (mobo or add-in card) settings wrong, or whatever. If you have a bus addressing problem with your QL41000's then that could also screw up the box trying to correctly address the PERC.
How many QL41000's, on-board plus add-in cards, does the box have? Does it really have 8 of 'em?
PS. Just looked at the tech spec and it could have 8 ports.
I do notice though that on your post a PERC card is not listed as having no driver, unless this PERC is actually a LSI Logic OEM.
Okay, so I would now be inclined to try and install any common Linux distribution just to prove the hardware setup. Is it only Solaris that won't install? Or is there a problem installing a similar OS?
I boot it with RHEL 7.7 iso and it was able to go through. So seems like, it is only Solaris iso, which it is not detecting.
Also, I tried to install OVM 3.4.6 (which will also server purpose, because my ultimate goal is to deploy Oracle VMs). It is Linux based. It ties to boot and then fails on below error
