Need some help with re installing to baseline configuration DL380 G5 windows storage server NAS

[malabito]

I have a brand new DL380 which I need to re installed to its original settings using the recovery cd. The issue is since i dis configured the original array which it came with the recovery dvd is giving me the following error, invalid array please contact hp support. I was on the phone with hp regional support for more then 4 hours and still nothing, i still have the same error. The server came with 8 hard drives, 6 were 146 gigas and 2 36 gigas hard drives. If some one could please tell in which configuration to put the disks so I can recover my server. I will really aprecciate your support. I tried raid 5 and raid 1+0, and a couple of other arrays but still no luck.

Thanks and best regards.

[Monty Phillips]

Hi Alejandro,

I assume from your description that there is no data on your logical volumes that you need to save. The below steps will delete ALL data on all volumes you may have created. If you have data on some of the drives you manually configured in the past, do not use these steps as these steps will result in you losing that data. This will get things back to "out-of-the-box" configuration.


Use this method to QR the server
---------------------------------
1) Cold boot the server with the QR DVD in the server
2) When it comes up to the Array Configuration Utility message, hit  F8  to edit the ACU config
3) Delete all logical drives that are currently configured
4) Save changes and exit
5) The boot process will continue after exiting so do NOT reboot the server again
6) Let the server boot from the QR DVD. It should run fine now.

The QR DVD will lay out the correct array configuration (a 30GB and a 5GB logical volume) so you will not need to do anything manually. If in the future you run the QR DVD again, it should not fail with the error you are seeing since it will see the expected array configuration.
  
The reason why it is failing is because the QR DVD expects to see a specific Logical drive configuration.  If it sees another size logical volume, it will not perform the QR in order to protect against overwriting data that a customer may have created.
 
In addition to this, the smart array controllers in the Proliant servers will automatically create a logical volume if none are detected.  Thus, if you delete all your logical volumes and reboot your server before booting from the QR DVD, a default logical volume will be created so the QR will fail every time. That is why step 5 above is so important and to not reboot after deleting any logical drives and to just continue the boot process to the QR DVD.

Best Regards,
Monty

[Monty Phillips]

Noticed my posting has funky characters in it. Just ignore the "Ã " characters. Sorry about that.

[malabito]

Mr Montyp,

Thanks for your reply i will be trying the solution you posted this tuesday, and update by night with the results. I hope it does work since I spend all Friday trying to find how to restore the server and no luck. In the server manual it says not to delete one of the partitions if you want to be able to restore the server back again, but it doesn't say what to do in case they are all gone, i hope your suggestion solves the issue.

Thanks and best regards...

[malabito]

Mr Montyp,

Your help save me some long hours of work, thank you very much. I was able to restore the server, doing exactly as you told me. Why didn´t regional HP support knew abut this and kept me over the phone for almost 4 hours.

Thanks, you were of great help.

Best regards.

[Monty Phillips]

Hi Alejandro,

Glad to hear that dod the trick for you.

I will be sure to feed this back through the support channel to try and prevent such things again in the future.

Thanks,
Monty