DL380 G7 - Install O/S to 4TB array...

[Dave Onex]

Hi Folks;

I have a DL380 G7 that I am trying to install DataCenter R2 (x64) on.

The machine has been configured with a single 4Tb (or so) array and the O/S does not want to install on it. It seems to want a 2TB partition (unless I'm mistaken).

I thought that 2TB limit went out the window with the changeover to x64? Am I mistaken or doing something wrong?

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hi, I believe you would need a GPT partition to get over the 2TB.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463524

says

"Note: Windows only supports booting from a GPT disk on systems that contain Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) boot firmware."

As far as I can tell, this may only be available on the HP integrity servers, or do you see something similar to this when booting?

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c02666712〈=en&cc=us&taskId=101&prodSeriesId=4194735&prodTypeId=3709945

-- Are you installing it via smartstart CD? Another thought is that maybe your problem is that you have too much RAM installed?

[Dave Onex]

Hi Johan, thanks for the reply :-)

No, I'm not seeing any errors per se - I just can't seem to create one 4TB volume and install the O/S on it without SmartStart creating a new partition for the O/S.

I'm quite sure it comes back to UEFI as you pointed out. I just assumed a G7 machine such as the 380 would support this natively (using UEFI or whatever means).

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure my HP Mini 110 has UEFI (seriously!).

I finally accepted the fact that I would have two partitions (one for the O/S and one for data) and then decided to live with it.

When I went into Disk Manager in Win2K '08 though I saw this;

1) 308 GB (O/S created by Smart Start)
2) 1739 GB
3) 1863 GB

No problem, I'll just expand the second to include the 3rd and be done with it. No dice. I can't combine 2 & 3 into one partition.

OK, I create a partition out of #2 - no problem. I then go to #3 to create a partition - it won't. Right-clicking the partition gives me two options - Properties & Help.

Arghhhhh....

I have 144 gigs of memory installed, all the latest firmware updates (so the bulletin you mentioned doesn't apply) and patches/hotfixes from MS. To top it all off, I'm using Data Center so I figured there would be zero issues with boot partition size, or anything else for that matter!

[Johan Guldmyr]

Have you now created one logical volume of 300GB for the OS and then one logical volume of 3.7GB for the data? Or how is the array configured?

What if you right-click on the 3rd disk (the disk itself, on the left-most part) in disk management? Maybe you need to use a special type of disk - like dynamic or something like that?

[Dave Onex]

Hi Johan - sorry for the late reply I got side-tracked for a few days :-(

To answer your questions, it's a single raid 6 array and when I ran smart start it created a small (300 gig) partition for the O/S.

So I have this;

Disk 0 - 3.9TB composed of C: (300 gigs) D: (1.7TB) and an unallocated partition of 1.8TB that I can't do anything with.

I can only shrink C & D but can't do anything with the last 1.8TB.

I was hoping to take that 1.8TB of un-used space and join it to D:

[Bob_Vance]

Is the drive a GPT drive in Windows?
This *is* a Win2k8 install, correct?
I thought W2k8 always created GPT drives.

It looks like Smart Start isn't so Smart after all -- it should have given you the option to create GPT drives. But then I would have thought that the Win2k8 install would have made it GPT.

When you did the Smart Start, did it bring up ACU so you could create and allocate the Array like you want rather than how it (SS) wants.

If you can run ACU, you could try to create a small 300GB LD (Logical drive) out of the Array to install on and create the remainder as a 3.7 TB LD. These would be two totally separate *drives* in Windows.

Then, once up and running, you should be able to create the second drive as a GPT and get a "full" 3.7 TB partition.


BTW, I prefer having a separate partition for the O/S. I always do it that way.


bv

[Bob_Vance]

I just found this:


"or you can create logical drive in ACU,
just boot smartstart cd, and choose Maintenance)
"


bv

[Dave Onex]

Hi Bob;

This is Windows 2008 R2 x64 Datacenter (which is why I would have thought it would certainly have no issues seeing more then 2TB).

In Windows disk manager the disk shows up as 'Basic' so I'm assuming that means it's not GPT :-(

When I ran the smartdisk I noticed something - it would not install the O/S because there was no defined logical array. In the past Smart Disk would always notice this and then ask if I wanted to create an array and then invoke a wizard etc. That never happened so I went into the maintenance section of the Smart Disk and ran the ACU and created a single Raid-6 array.

I did not define any other partitions. I then went back to smart start and did the install and it then asked me if I wanted it to create an install partition and it gave me 3 choices of size (all around 300 megs) so I picked one and carried on.

So, it seems that neither Smart Disk nor Windows chose to go with GPT and I guess that's why I'm stuck with the partitions I have (for right now).

My understanding is tht GPT requires a UEFI BIOS? Can anyone confirm that for me or better yet confirm that the DL380 G7 has a UEFI BIOS that supports GPT?

Feel free to correct me if you see any obvious oversights :-)

and Thanks!

[Bob_Vance]

Well, what I'm saying is to re-do the install.
(Of course, it's your time, not mine ;>)

In windows, do you now see ONE Physical drive with 2 (or 3) partitions?

If yes,

. First, use SS to run ACU and delete the one Logical drive it previously created.

. Then create TWO LD's one 300GB (or less) and the other with the remaining space.

Again, windows will see these as TWO drives (not partitions).

Install the win2k8 on the first LD.
It'll probably be one partition taking up the entire 300GB.

Then when Win2k8 is up, you should be able to make the second *drive* a GPT drive and create larger partitions.



bv

[Bob_Vance]

You know, as I think about it, it may that these built-in Smart Arrays do not support the features in the external Arrays like the MSA1500, which I'm more familiar with.

You may *not* be able to carve up LDs on these built-in controllers.
You may only have the option of grouping disks which then become the LUN.

So, possibly

"never mind ..."

:[



bv

[Dave Onex]

Hi Bob;

I just wanted to thank you for your advice - last night (and early this morning :-) I re-installed the O/S this time following your steps.

I created one raid 6 array and then created two logical drives (350 MB) and the remainder of the open space.

When Windows came back I was able to right-click the second drive and choose GPT.

So your advice was spot on. Just for the record (and for others who also want to install the O/S to a single large partition) this is what I found out;

In order to use one large partition (larger then 2TB) and boot off of it the BIOS needs to support UEFI. According to Compaq (as of Aug 2010) they are not pursuing UEFI support at this time.

Windows supports both regular MBR and UEFI/GPT. The key sentence seems to be this though, in order to boot off a larger then 2TB partition the BIOS must support UEFI.

So, I learned something new (although I really figured that with a new machine and the latest O/S there would have been no issues).

At any rate, thanks very much for your help! It's all fixed-up now :-)

[Dave Onex]

BTW, in short, it's basically what Johan said right from the start of this thread :-)

[Bob_Vance]

This has been an interesting and very informative thread !

Yes, as I read Johan's 2nd post, I see that I basically repeated what he said :[
I didn't mean not to credit him -- I just didn't read it carefully enough.


One note:
on the older, external arrays, MSA1000 & 1500, you assigned the RAID level at the LD level, not the "Array" level.
((within the constraints of the number of disks in the "Array".
E.g., with only two disks then you could only do LDs with RAID0 or RAID1.
))

So, apparently, on the internal Smart Array controllers, you have to do it at the "Array" level?

This is the same as for the MSA2000s, which annoys me,



BTW, for other reading this thread, the terminology on the Smart Array controllers is this:

1) "Array" is a group of disks from the total set of available disks.
((The EVA Array terminology is "Disk Group", which I think is more accurate.
The MSA2000s call it a Virtual disk, which makes no sense to me.
))
So, from 6 total disks, you could create, for example,
a 2-disk "Array"
& a 4 disk "Array"
or one 6-disk "Array" (as you did).
This can be confusing, since we usually think of "Array" as the whole set of disks and logic to manage them.


2) From an "Array" you can create multiple Logical Disks -- slices of the disk group.
((EVA calls this a Virtual Disk.
MSA2000 call it a Volume !
))

The LD is what is presented as a LUN to the server(s), and shows up as a separate physical disk in the server.

The original install only created *one* LD out of the 6-disk "Array", so Windows was only seeing one "disk" (drive), with a couple of partitions on it.


3) "Partition" is just within the OS, carving up the "Physical" disk.


So, the terminology is very important from a transfer of knowledge point of view and can become very confusing among the various HP Array models!



bv

[Johan Guldmyr]

I'm glad you got it working =)

[tbirdguy]

Not to bring up a 2+ yr old thread, but I wanted to thank all here, after pulling my thinning hair out trying to configure an ml110 with a b110i with 4 2TB drives... I had almost given up and was going to use SBS 2011 to configure the raid instead...
thanks to all of you!

[rojanaust]

Thank you.   This worked for us also!

HP StoreEasy 1430 with 4x 3TB SATA Disks with P222 512MB Controller.    (StoreEasy 1430 is basically a DL320 G8..)

Ran into the same issue, booting Windows Server 2008 or 2012 and got "Cannot install Windows on GPT Disks.."

1.  Boot into ACU

2.  Select all Four (4)  3TB Disks, create RAID5 array

3.  Make 1 Logical Drive 500GB

4.  Make 1 Logical Drive the rest which was about 8TB..

5.  Boot up Windows Server install and install Windows on the 500GB disk

6.  After installation, disk managment and convert the bigger disk to GPT.  All done!

Tried doing this with 3rd party partition tools like Gparted but it wants you to create the parition table first which is either MBR (MSDOS) or GPT.  Tried MBR, but after installig Windows I could not do anything with the bigger volume. It was greyed out!  I also had grief using the provisioning tool v1.60.

Cheers

[LID]

Hello,

Are you sure that is possible to create 2x logical drive once the RAID 5 has been created?

Usually when you select the 4 disks and create the RAID 5, ACU will give you the possibility to create only one unique logical drive  MBR that will be limited to 2 TB.

Thanks,

Liberato

[waaronb]

The array config util (or SAS) lets you create the array and then you can create whatever logical drives on the array.

For example, you could create an array out of 8 physical disks and then create the first logical drive as a RAID 1+0 using some of the space and then a RAID 5 or 50 using the rest of the space. (Just an example of course). Or use the same RAID levels on all the logical drives, just using different amounts of space.

Mixing the RAID levels for different logical drives on the same array depends on having a certain # of disks of course... an odd number won't let you do RAID 1 or 1+0 but would work fine for RAID 5 and possibly RAID 50, for example.

The boot-time array controller setup ("press F8") doesn't give you those kinds of options... you need to boot off the SPP / Smartstart and use the full array config in there.

I think the Gen8 boxes do have a better array config you can access from the setup... I don't remember off the top of my head but that rings a bell. Maybe part of the built in "intelligent provisioning".

[Sharanya_KR]

What a great post!!!

Solution given  here worked like a charm...

You have saved loads & loads of my time.. Thanks :-)

[Sbrown]

You need to never use [F8] to configure your raid to have the ability to slice and dice the number of disks to virtual raid-levels. Once you create the first raid with [F8] option bios, you will not be able to create more slices! Good reason for having a boot CD around for configuration of the array should you want to have a raid-1/10/5 array on the same number of disks!