Move over from SAS HDD to SATA SSD with HPE SSA, Clonezilla and UEFI System Utilities

[UdoS]

Hi,

we would like to replace our Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V Hosts SAS HDD with SATA SSD, and i thought that would be an easy processs.

I followed that draft:

1. Created drive with Offline Smart Storage Administrator - but thats another story.
2. Shutdown all guest and configure them to stay offline on boot. Shutdown host. 
3. Boot Clonezilla from USB: Make Device-Device clone
4. Rebooted into UEFI System Utilities, Open Advanced UEFI Boot Maintainance.  

Now - besides Clonezilla - all what i got presented was two identical entries:

• [GPT] Embedded RAID 1 : Smart Array P440a Controller
• [GPT] Embedded RAID 1 : Smart Array P440a Controller

I would be perfectly fine if there was only one entry, but two of the same kind? F1 Help helped a lot, keeping me confused about situation: They both had the same string.  I had chosen the second one, "RAID 1" (RAID-A by the way, as of SSA), selected \EFI\Bootx64.efi, confirmed, rebooted into boot menu, selected the new entry and found my old drives. I rebooted did the same with the very first "RAID 1" and now got even more confused: The system booted from the same drives. In both cases the newly created drive was listed with partitions cloned but offline. Sure, because the drives have the same identity. Cross tested that, made one time boots, made boot EFI itsself, just to be confronted with the same situation. After half a dozen tries i scanned the QR, which guided me to a 404.

What did i miss?

Kind regards,

Udo

[Suman_1978]

Hi,

Have you tried to log a support case with HPE?

"Moving drives and arrays" https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=emr_na-a00020470en_us

Thank You!
https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/home

[UdoS]

Hi,

thanks for your reply!

Have you tried to log a support case with HPE?

no, not yet, since server is out of warranty. Is that possible beyond and if, where?

"Moving drives and arrays" https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=emr_na-a00020470en_us

Thanks for the link. We thought about removing original drives and replacing it with the cloned ones. 

But it must be possible to switch over to another RAID to boot from. It would make no sense to have an option to add new UEFI Boot Options, if i have to replace drives to get them up and running.

Kind regards,

Udo

[ksram]

Hi,

Please try installing the HPE SSA : Software Details | HPE Support Center

And try "Set Bootable Logical Drive/Volume"

it is in this path:

HPE SSA > Controller : configure -> Set Bootable Logical Drive/Volume

Thank you

RamKS

[UdoS]

Hi @ksram, hello @Suman_1978 and all ,

thanks for your reply.

Do you mean this:

Because this menu item states, that behaviour is only meant to make a difference, if UEFI is not enabled:

The sentence in the yellow bar tells "On systems that capabel of UEFI, these settings only apply if the server is booted into the old BIOS mode."  

Or did I miss a point?

Kind regards,

Udo

[ksram]

Hi @UdoS ,

Thank you for trying.

As the message says looks like it supports only UEFI. try changing the Mode Legacy BIOS / UEFI as desired and check.

Thank you

RamKS

[UdoS]

Hi @ksram ,

I think its impossible to boot a system set up to use UEFI/GPT with BIOS/MBR enabled. Thats a total different approach.

Thing is: This is a production system, and this system will went down for about 3hrs for a clone, boot up and have to run. 

Any other ideas?

Kind regards,

Udo

[ksram]

Hi @UdoS ,

Good day!

We would suggest to perform it on off Hours - may be on Weekends.

This is only one time that you may need to spend some time on, after which it would be easier and convenient for you.

You may try cloning / snapshot using third party tools - but not sure if that helps.

Thank you

RamKS