MSA1050 SAS and DL380 Gen8 with H241 and Hyper-V Server 2016

[Eggman_2112]

Hi everyone,

Just trying to set up a cluster with MSA 1050 SAS  & H241 HBA in HBA Mode (not RAID) in 2 x DL380 Gen8's with Hyper-V Server 2016 (with all updates) for a test environment.

I read the user guide, best practices and other pages but I am not making much progress. I am using Windows Admin Center (WAC) to configure everything. I have the failover clustering and MPIO services installed on both Hyper-V Servers. 

I also have a another DL380 Gen8 with Hyper-V Server 2016 running a local VM with Server 2016 as the DC DNS DHCP Server. Both the cluster servers are joined to the domain as well.

I've tried using Failover Cluster Manager snap-in and Cluster Creation in WAC with these results:

1. Failover Cluster Manager Validation Wizard Snap-In but is failing on the List Disks test.

2. WAC Cluster Creation Preview is failing on network Adapter symmetry validation test.

I have a couple of questions:

1. When mapping volumes to initiators in the MSA storage management utility - do I map all the volumes to all the initiators? Is an initiator one port on one controller or how does that work.

2. When I try to format one or more of logical volumes through WAC, I get a disk is read only error but the disks are set to read-write in the MSA SMU. It seems only one server can access the disks even though I have MPIO and failover clustering installed but other times it works.

The H241 driver version is the latest - 106.26.0.64. Firmware - 7.00

Most of the guides I read relate to using fibre-channel or iSCSI setups so it's a little confusing. I like getting help from the forum, but I can also go through support or try spiceworks if I can't find any answers here.

I just seem to be missing something as I think this should be working with no issues. Let me know if I can provide more info or screenshots or maybe something is not compatible as this may help someone else down the road. It looks like I have some more learning to do as well.

First Edit: Looks like theres a Version 7.00 Firmware for H241 - I'll be trying that first. - Firmware updated now.

Thank you for your time!

[Eggman_2112 · Accepted solution]

I believe I solved this but I now have another issue which I will put in a new thread

I used Windows Admin Center to create a share on each node.

I used command line on each Hyper-V Server to install chrome -yes chrome runs as gui in hyper-v command prompt - weird.

Then I mounted ProLiant Support Pack P19473 which is for Gen10 servers but it had the latest drivers and firmware for some of the devices in the Gen8 server. I used chrome to load the PSP updater interface from the local shared folder.

I updated the firmwares and drivers of devices it found.

Then I mounted ProLiant Support Pack P03093 which is officially the last PSP for Gen8 Servers.

I installed any firmware and drivers that were not found in the Gen10 PSP.

I made sure MPIO was enabled in both Gen8 Hyper-V Server Nodes.

Then I found this information about claiming MPIO devices in poweshell on the Dell website:

https://www.dell.com/support/article/ca/en/cadhs1/sln72159/windows-server-how-to-enable-multipath-i-o-mpio-in-core-non-gui-versions-of-windows-server?lang=en

So I ran the command:

mpclaim -r -i -a ""

and the cluster validation passed and I was able to create the cluster! Yay!

Now its failing when I try to create a file server role so off to a new post.