Installing Windows Server 2012 on an ML110 G5 with RAID?

[Charles_Lavin]

Hi --

Has anyone been able to / is it possible to install Windows Server 2012 (in my case, Essential) on a Proliant ML110 G5 server with the on-board RAID chip enabled?

I've been going around in circles and cannot seem to get this to work.

Using the latest "HP Embedded G5 SATA RAID controller" driver I could find (for Windows 2008 R2, cp024648) doesn't work. When I run the Windows installer and it shows me the list of drives to install to, the RAID1 logical volume that was confirmed upon BIOS boot doesn't show up, but its two component hard drives do. Loading the Windows 2008 R2 driver mentioned above doesn't change this. The driver is loaded without error, but then I'm taken right back to the list with the two hard drives.

I actually installed Windows Server 2008 on the machine (to RAID), verified that Windows only saw the SYSRAID1 logical disk as its only hard drive, then upgraded the machine to Windows Server 2012. When that was over, I was left with two physical drives -- one in use, one empty -- despite the machine, on boot, still claiming that there was a defined RAID1 LD.

I've pored through posts high and low, and haven't found anything useful. One post from one of these HP Forums did sound promising, but it linked to drivers on an HP FTP site that apparently has had all those directories removed.  I've also come across references to an Adaptec driver (not from HP) that would do the job, but I can't find it.

Is this a hopeless cause, or is there a way to do this?

Thanks
CL

[Jimmy Vance]

That system uses chipset RAID which is controlled by a driver. I doubt there is a 2012 driver for that older controller.  Since this is really just software RAID, you will do just as well to use the RAID function built into Windows itself.

[Charles_Lavin]

Really? Now I'm confused ... How is handling the RAID functions through the chipset not more efficient than letting Windows handle the mirroring)? This is going to be a really low-end, low-use server that's not going to see all that much use as it is, but I don't want Windows and the processor working overtime on disk mirroring if there's already a chip on the board to handle that.

Thanks
CL

[Jimmy Vance]

chipset RAID is all controlled in the driver, so it is softare RAID, not 'hardware' RAID refrencing a "P" Series Smart Array controller as an example of hardware RAID.  The current shipping servers still offer a chipset controller, it is the 'B' series Dynamic Smart Array, it uses the systemboard chipset. Software RAID in a driver is no better or worse than the RAID function built into the OS itself

[Charles_Lavin]

Using Windows mirroring is definitely not a viable option.

After I installed the OS to a single drive and got everything updated and stable, I went into Drive Manager and enabled mirroring on the volume. In less than a minute one, then both, of the hard drives were labeled with "!" icons. Then both sides of the mirror were labeled "At risk". The Event Log started getting groups of seven disk errors indicating that one of the hard drives had "a bad block". These are new identical Seagate drives (down to the firmware), and SeaTools can't find a thing wrong with either of them.

If I reboot the server and check the volumes, they are marked "Failed redundancy".

If I remove the mirror, everything goes back to work as if nothing had happened.

I have been through this progression three times already.

CL