OSD deployment to a DL380 G10 with installed NVMEs

yaro137 — Fri, 31 May 2019 14:51:05 GMT

I have a new server for testing and it came with 2 SAS and 2 NVME disks. When my lighttouch iso triggers boot image I see in the logs it's failing to get device layout for disk that by running wmic diskdrive list brief nvme rather than my sas raid volume. I can't see a way to disable nvme for the time of OS installation. The only thing I could disable is Embedded NVM Express Option ROM which I have disabled but this doesn't prevebnt the additional disks to be listed. Anyone know how to tackle this problem?

Re: OSD deployment to a DL380 G10 with installed NVMEs

kriM — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 08:20:34 GMT

There are two ways to eject the NVMe drive.
Hardware drive ejection
Software drive ejection

Note: If UEFI Bios is selected, then NVMe are default first bootable.
Legacy Bios, NVMe drives are supported but are not bootable.

1. Hardware drive ejection.

HPE servers support ejecting and adding NVMe SSDs using a power button located on the front of each drive. To safely eject an NVMe SSD,
momentarily press the power button. While the operating system is in the process of safely ejecting the NVMe drive, the Power and Do Not
Remove LEDs will flash. This operation usually takes a few seconds.
If a drive is being accessed for read or write transactions at the moment that the power button is pressed, then the Power and Do Not Remove
LEDs will quickly return to fully on after briefly flashing; this indicates that the drive is being accessed and the power button must be pressed
again to re-initiate the ejection process after the system finishes accessing the drive.

After the operating system has safely ejected the drive, the Power and Do Not Remove LEDs will turn off indicating that it’s now safe to
physically remove the NVMe drive. You can re-enable the drive by pressing the power button again. When replacing or hot-adding NVMe drives,
they are powered on automatically by the operating system.

2. Software drive ejection.
Operating systems contain built-in methods to safely eject devices from the server. HPE drives will control the Power and Do Not Remove
LEDs to reflect the ejected state of the NVMe drive. Refer to operating system documentation on how to use the software drive eject feature.

BIOS features:
UEFI Bios:
NVMe drives are supported in UEFI mode and bootable. In UEFI mode, the user can select to use the adapter-provided NVMe Option ROM or
to use system BIOS provided NVMe Option ROM. By default, system BIOS provided NVMe Option ROM is used for NVMe drives on the system.
If the user chooses to use the adapter-provided NVMe Option ROM, change the NVM Express Options selection in the System Configuration
menu. The selected option applies to all NVMe drives on the system.

Legacy BIOS
NVMe drives are supported in legacy BIOS mode, but are not bootable.

Please Refer to the HPE Gen10 NVMe Technology. Page 3, 4 and 9.
https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getdocument.aspx?docname=a00040243enw

Re: OSD deployment to a DL380 G10 with installed NVMEs

yaro137 — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 20:25:41 GMT

Legacy BIOS perhaps not bootable but discoverable. One first need to install the OS to be able to eject so this doesn't help much with OS deployment.

topic Re: OSD deployment to a DL380 G10 with installed NVMEs in Operating System - Microsoft

OSD deployment to a DL380 G10 with installed NVMEs

Re: OSD deployment to a DL380 G10 with installed NVMEs

Re: OSD deployment to a DL380 G10 with installed NVMEs