Howto create a virtual disk on. a MR416i using Redfish on DL360 Gen10Plus

[rpronk]

Hello,

We are using Redfish to provision our servers with eg Bios settings and to create RAID arrays. 
With eg the P816 this works like a charm.
Our latest batch of DL360 Gen 10 Plus systems however come with a MR416i due to shortages of the P816 controller. 

I figured out that you should use the Storage endpoint with the MR series controllers instead of the SmartStorage endpoint which we use for the P SR series. I can get all the information I need (eg disks)

Following the documentation it should be possible to create RAID volumes/arrays since iLO 2.55. 
In this manual it is mentioned

Verify POST requests are allowed to create volumes: HEAD /redfish/v1/Systems/1/Storage/{item}/Volumes

Which I did and I see I am not allowed to use POST, only GET and HEAD. I login using the administrator account so rights can't be the issue.

iLOrest > login
Discovering data...Done
iLOrest > rawhead /redfish/v1/Systems/1/Storage/DE009000/Volumes
The operation completed successfully.
{
  "Allow": "GET, HEAD",
  "Cache-Control": "no-store",
  "Content-Length": "0",
  "Date": "Fri, 28 Oct 2022 18:49:16 GMT",
  "ETag": "\"54b42149\"",
  "Link": "https://redfish.dmtf.org/schemas/VolumeCollection.json",
  "OData-Version": "4.0",
  "X-Content-Type-Options": "nosniff",
  "X-Frame-Options": "sameorigin",
  "X-XSS-Protection": "1; mode=block"
}

Doing the actual call to create the volume simply fails with "Method not allowed"

Using a POST call to "/redfish/v1/Systems/1/Storage/DE009000/Volumes" with payload:

{
  "RAIDType": "RAID5",
  "DisplayName": "OSdata",
  "Links": {
    "Drives": [
      {
        "@odata.id": "/redfish/v1/Systems/1/Storage/DE009000/Drives/0"
      },
      {
        "@odata.id": "/redfish/v1/Systems/1/Storage/DE009000/Drives/1"
      },
      {
        "@odata.id": "/redfish/v1/Systems/1/Storage/DE009000/Drives/2"
      }
    ]
  }
}

The system is running the latest firmwares
 - iLO 2.72
- MR416i 52.16.3-4455C
- Bios 1.64

There are three unused disks available and the controller is set to RAID personality.

What am I missing or doing wrong here? Help would be much appriciated.

[pchops · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, the Redfish capabilities on the MR-series of controllers is currently limited -- see this document for some details, ie:

https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a50006146enw

(p.7) "Both storage controller families have implemented the DMTF Redfish storage data model for inventory (GET). However, only the SR controllers currently support Redfish write operations (POST, DEL, and PATCH). As a result, customers using the HPE MR Storage Controllers need to run a StorCLI script from a pre-boot OS for automated deployment until a future date when the HPE MR Storage Controller firmware is updated to support Redfish configuration."

[rpronk]

Thank you for your quick reply.

Quiet a shame that these new controllers don't support those basic management operations and our HPe pre-sale tech consultant didn't inform us about that.

[pirx]

Yeah, a while ago we got a note that the p408 controllers are not available and that HPE will replace them with MR416i. This now completly breaks our deployment.

[jasinfviuanrsgv]

Has this been resolved yet? Our Gen11 systems are shipping with the MR416 card.