Install SLES 11 SP3 on DL320e G8 with B120i RAID

[RFons]

Hi,

I am trying to install SUSE Enterprise Server on a DL320e G8 which has a B120i RAID controller.  I can create a RAID 1 in the RAID controller, but the SUSE installer still sees two separate hard drives.  I have downloaded the SUSE driver for the RAID controller - which HP supply as RPMs, which is not entirely hepful.  I then used this procedure to create a Driver Update Disk:

Creating a Driver Update Disk on Novell.com

When I tell tell the installer to load a driver from my USB drive it thinks abit and searches for disk controllers, but I'm not sure whether or not it is actually installing the driver.  Either way, it then goes on to treat the two disks in my RAID set as separate disks.

Does anyone know if this is actually possible?  What undocumented top-secret hack am I missing in order to make this supposedly supported setup work?

Cheers.

[Jimmy Vance · Accepted solution]

instead of grabbing the RPM, download the DDriver update dd image.  "dd" the image out to a USB key and the installer should see the image.  Instructions are included at the link

http://h20566.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/template.PAGE/public/psi/swdDetails/?sp4ts.oid=5293151&spf_p.tpst=swdMain&spf_p.prp_swdMain=wsrp-navigationalState%3Didx%253D%257CswItem%253DMTX_bdffb698608d4f95a82bb62c18%257CswEnvOID%253D4049%257CitemLocale%253D%257CswLang%253D%257Cmode%253D%257Caction%253DdriverDocument&javax.portlet.begCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vig...

[RFons]

Hi Jimmy,

Thanks for that link - it can't be found using the HP website search or Google and isn't linked to from the DL320e G8 v2 product page or the B120i product page, and yet is exactly what I spent quite some time trying to find.

HP support actually pointed me to an even easier solution, however, which is to use "Intelligent Provisioning". You just press F10 at startup and a wizard sorts out the drivers and sets up the install for you. If only it had a less opaque name or was featured somewhere in the setup guide I might have come across that years ago...

Of course, support asked me to download a 1GB ISO updater which turned out to be irrelevant and put the server into a perpetual updating loop until I found the note at the bottom of the FAQ explaining that Intelligent Provisioning is built-in, at which point I worked out what the ISO actually was.

I found lots of threads on the web about trying to achieve approximately this install.  None of them reached a solution and none even mentioned Intelligent Provisioning, so hopefully this will be useful to others in the future.

[Jimmy Vance]

The driver is listed on the SLES11 driver page for this server., It is under the heading Software - Driver Update

http://h20566.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/template.PAGE/public/psi/swdHome/?sp4ts.oid=5379528&spf_p.tpst=swdMain&spf_p.prp_swdMain=wsrp-navigationalState%3DswEnvOID%253D4049%257CswLang%253D%257Caction%253DlistDriver&javax.portlet.begCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken#Software - Driver Update

It is listed as the HP Dynamic Smart Array SATA RAID Controller Driver for SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 11 (AMD64/EM64T)