No raid 5 option in Offline ACU interface

[wroot]

We have ProLiant DL380p Gen8 with Smart Array P420i controller. 4 x SAS 300 GB discs in Box 2. I'm booting the server and press F5 when it shows the info about Smart Array controller.

BTW, at first while pressing F5 on that screen it was giving me NMI errors on the red screen. Then i have created RAID0 via ORCA and installed the OS. Now it doesn't give me that error and launches the ACU normally. What was that and should i be worried about the hardware fault?

Anyway, it now launches the offline ACU and i press on unassigned drives and press Create Array, select all 4 drives. Then i press Create logical drive and it shows only RAID 0 and RAID 1+0. Though on youtube videos and in docs i see that i should have RAID 5 option also. Though in these videos people usually already have some other raid setup and only create raid 5 as a second array. Maybe that's the problem? I only has 4 discs and i want to have only RAID 5 and i will install OS and have my data on this single array. Is this possible? Should i upgrade controller's firmware?

P.S. This thread has been moved from ProLiant Storage Systems to ProLiant Servers (ML,DL,SL). - Hp Forum Moderator

[wroot]

BTW, I have read that ORCA should automatically create RAID5 if there are 3-6 drives upon first server launch. But it only creates RAID 1+0 automatically and there is no RAID5 option in this tool either.

[Johan Guldmyr · Accepted solution]

Hi, 

about the possibly hw errors - why don't you run some diagnostics? Perhaps look in HP iml/ilo log, run memory test, etc?

To use RAID5 with p420i you need at least 512MB cache - see the section about fault tolerance in the quickspecs: http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/14228_na/14228_na.html

"RAID5 is available on the SA P420/P420i with a minimum of 512MB cache"

[wroot]

Crap.. when the server boots it shows controller's info and it says 0 MB. So it means this controller is ZM version with no cache? Looks like we've been screwed by our retailers and they sold us cheaper controller's version. Well, next time we should better describe technical requirements for RAID types.. :) Will have to go with 1+0 for now. I have seen information that it is possible to migrate 1+0 to 5 later (if we shall buy 512MB cache), but i have also seen comments that this usually only works in theory and often doesn't work in practice.

On the diagnostics. iLO Event log doesn't show errors. Integrated Management log logs an error every time i see that read screen. Log says:

CriticalPCI Bus 01/21/2013 17:31 01/21/2013 17:31 1 Uncorrectable PCI Express Error (Embedded device, Bus 0, Device 0, Function 0, Error status 0x00100000)

CriticalSystem Error 01/21/2013 17:31 01/21/2013 17:31 1 Unrecoverable System Error (NMI) has occurred. System Firmware will log additional details in a separate IML entry if possible

But as i said, this error doesn't show up anymore when i start offline ACU. System Health is now showing OK status. I would love to run diagnostics. But i haven't found such option in BIOS or anywhere else in the server software. Should i run Memtest+? But i'm not sure the problem could be with memory.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Yeah looks like you got the ZM controller. You should be able to see in ACU/diagnostics how much memory but yeah.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00729544/c00729544.pdf has details about how to migrate. 15min/GB. So is that per each GB that's expanded or the total raid size? If it's the total raid size you'll need 12 days to migrate..

About the error. If you don't see it anymore probably don't need to worry about it. Just make sure everything works. With generations before Gen8 you could boot the server on the smartstart CD and run offline diagnostics - in the Gen8 it's included in the intelligent provisioning tool. Insight diagnostics, HP ACU diagnostics, maybe even more.

memtest is probably not relevant for that error.

[wroot]

Ok. I have found diagnostic tests in the HP Intelligent Provisioning. All are passing. So i'll assume everything is fine and will move on with OS installation. Trying to do this via Provisioning, with Firmware Updates. First time for me :) Will see how it goes.

Thanks for you help.

[Andy_Mr_Hotplug]

Hi there

It's clear: You have an array controller installed without read/write cache, i guess. The basic models are Read Cache.

Buy an optional read write cache, enable it in ACU and you have full RAID 5 support.