DL 320 with Smart Array 641 Controller BOOT FAILURES

[Wayne Hoyle]

Hi,
I have purchased 2x DL320 Servers, but rather than use the internal IDE Raid, I have Purchased 2x 291966-B21 Raid Controllers and 4x 357012-B21 Hard disks.
I installed and configured the Servers Using HP SmartStart 7.1 and had the system running.
After about 20 minutes, the Good Old Windows BSOD shows (Hardware Error) Fatal exception etc..

I reboot the server, only to be faced with Operating System Not Found.
I have tried swapping the controllers.
Swapping the disks into the other server, and manually building the other server with brand new hardware - All with the same result!
I cannot see anything on the website relating to this problem, but then again, i probably have be squinting while doing the searches!!

Thanks

[Tarek Kawach]

Hi Wayne:

When you had non system disk or disk error; did the controller SA641 found the logical drive or not.

- If the SA641 found the logical drive when it initialized; then you need to check the boot controller ordre and Master boot record or Active partion info.

To do this Go to the server bios and make sure that the SA641 is the first boot order.

Then if that is true; and SA641 has one logical drive; then we need to boo to windows 98 or me MS-DOS disk can get from www.bootdisk.com; this willl allow us to access Fdisk ; to see if the partion info is still there.

Having said all that; we need to make sure that server has latest firmware for system board and also for the SA641 controller.

don't know if this is G1 or G2 server.

but here is the latest SA641 controller firmware.

Offline ROM Flash for SmartStart Maintenance: ROM Update Utility - Smart Array 641/642
version 2.34 A (17 Dec 04)http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/22239.html

-
Systems ROMPaq Firmware Upgrade Diskette for ProLiant DL320 G2 (D13) Servers
version 4.10 D13-09/15/2004 (11 Oct 04)http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/21989.html

Best regards,

Tarek.

[Wayne Hoyle]

Thanks for your reply,
The problem i seem to have is the 641 controller is NOT detected in the system.
When it eventually gets detected, the BIOS has the controller setup for the primary boot device.

I will try the new firmware update and post my findings on this forum.


Thanks

[Tarek Kawach]

Okay that is good,
make sure you have latest bios for server and controller.

Regards,

Tarek.