How to disable Automatic RAID on DL380 g5

[SupportSucks]

We are a non profit org.

We had several servers donated to us. (Actually we have over 600 compouters in stock - www.HawaiianHope.org)

One of them, the fastest and newest, is a Proliant DL380 g5. Nice hardware, Dual CPU with Quad core each, 20 gig of ram.

We have 3 drives in it and are trying to install FreeNAS. 

Actually FreNas is running successfully, except that every time the server restarts, it decides that it knows better than the human running it, and it automatically rebuilds the RAID array. 

I have tried every options in the menus, have manually removed the raid settings about 12 times now, booted with the SmartStart CD and removed the raid settings there.. but no matter what I do, every time it restarts it pops up with 3 menu options at boot, and the "default" setting is to automatically rebuild the raid. If it restarts i have to be standing there in front of it to press the escape key when the short menu pops up.  Then when i tell it no raid, now it does not see any drives at all. teh nly time it sees drives is when it automatically builds teh hardware raid

How do i tell it once and for all to disable the hardware raid ? Stop and dont freggin do it again, ever. I hate this type of "automation" that makes it more difficult to accomplish what the end user actually wants to do.

[SupportSucks]

And how do i change my "screen name" ?

After taking almsot 10 minutes to register on this forum just to ask a question, cause you aparently can no longer email "support" for actually getting support. i typed in teh first things that popped into my head and now cant figure out how to change it.

REALLY frustrated at this whole mess. over 6 hours screwing with this now trying t get it to work. REALLY frustrating.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hi, this is a forum mostly constisting of volunteers (not HP employees).

What is it you the end user wants? : Boot into FreeNAS without creating any arrays and then use the disks directly because ZFS?

First hit on google about FreeNAS and smart arrays: http://serverfault.com/questions/29349/disabling-raid-feature-on-hp-smart-array-p400

Anyway, not sure if there is a way to get around the automatic RAID5 setup.

Perhaps it would be OK if you instead created many RAID0 arrays?

Post in the http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Community-Feedback-Suggestions/bd-p/community-feedback-suggestions forum to request changing forum name.

[SupportSucks]

Thanks Johan for the rapid response.

Yes, i saw that reference to ZFS in that other post, but wanted to post a new question since the original was 5 years old. Was hoping someone finally resolved the issue.

Also saw others trying to set it up with multiple raid 0's, but they said then that kills options for other features. One post i saw said about changing the raid controller with something else, but then someone else contradicted it said that it was built in and cant be changed.

Wow. this sucks. to have such a nice peice of hardware and its basically useless to us right now. Maybe end up turning it into a web server or something

[Johan Guldmyr]

Controller is built-in, but it can be changed / extra controllers can be installed.

Would require moving cables and such though.. not sure if it would work in the end anyway.

You could setup the disks with many RAID0s and then install FreeNAS in a VM on the server and then present disks that are perhaps stored as files on the RAID0 to the VMs.

[Jimmy Vance]

There is no way to disable the RAID fucntion of the Smart Array controller in that model server.  If you want to treat the drives as JBOD, you will need to create three raid arrays each with one disk. Without configuring any type of array, the OS will not see the disks