Centos 7 install issue with HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8

[JEP11]

Some relevant info

8 x 1 TB drives in a raid 5 (hardware raid)

This system currenlty works on Centos 6.4 and has the OS installed

However when trying to setup a new install using Centos 7,  apparenlty there are a few issues which I am unable to get around so far

1) It tries to install using "biosboot" mode, however when trying to create a 1M biosboot partition as suggested, it can not create the device.  My understanding is Gen8 HP does not support UEFI mode and I can not find anything in the bios to disable legacy (BIOS) mode to give that a shot

2) It also complains about not supporting larger than a 2TB volume for OS (boot drive) install

I believe both of those are related to how the newer linux kernels interact with the older hardware (raid controller, etc) and legacy (bios) mode.

Has anyone run into this situation and found a workaround?

Thx

[Jimmy Vance]

On Gen8 servers, there is no 'Legacy boot mode' as the system firmware is BIOS and not UEFI.

How many logical drives were defined on the system when running CentOS 6.4? 

Most OS's using MBR (BIOS) drive types have a 2TB limit for the boot drive and many have issues if /boot is above the 1024 cyluinder boundy. Create your RAID 5 with all of your drives, then create a couple of logical drives. Make the first logical drive somewhere between 500-900 GB for the OS, and use the remaining space for the second logical drive. Install /boot /swap and / on the first logical drive and depending on what the system will be doing make /var or equivilent  the second logical drive.

As you can see on one of my systems, I have 24 900GB drives in a RAID 5 with spare.  On this system, I actually have two seperate arrays, but the logical drives are what is presented to The OS

sudo dmidecode | grep ProLiant
        Product Name: ProLiant DL380p Gen8
        Family: ProLiant

# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2       822G   29G  752G   4% /
tmpfs                16G   76K     16G   1% /dev/shm
/dev/sdb1          17T   11T    6.0T  64% /data

# hpssacli ctrl all show config

Smart Array P420i in Slot 0 (Embedded)    (sn: OU812)
   Port Name: 1I
   Port Name: 2I
   Gen8 ServBP 25+2 at Port 1I, Box 1, OK
   Gen8 ServBP 25+2 at Port 2I, Box 1, OK
   array A (SAS, Unused Space: 0  MB)
      logicaldrive 1 (838.3 GB, RAID 1, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:1 (port 1I:box 1:bay 1, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:2 (port 1I:box 1:bay 2, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:25 (port 2I:box 1:bay 25, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK, spare)
   array B (SAS, Unused Space: 0  MB)
      logicaldrive 2 (16.4 TB, RAID 6, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:3 (port 1I:box 1:bay 3, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:4 (port 1I:box 1:bay 4, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:5 (port 1I:box 1:bay 5, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:6 (port 1I:box 1:bay 6, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:7 (port 1I:box 1:bay 7, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:8 (port 1I:box 1:bay 8, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:9 (port 1I:box 1:bay 9, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:10 (port 1I:box 1:bay 10, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:11 (port 1I:box 1:bay 11, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:12 (port 1I:box 1:bay 12, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:13 (port 1I:box 1:bay 13, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:14 (port 2I:box 1:bay 14, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:15 (port 2I:box 1:bay 15, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:16 (port 2I:box 1:bay 16, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:17 (port 2I:box 1:bay 17, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:18 (port 2I:box 1:bay 18, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:19 (port 2I:box 1:bay 19, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:20 (port 2I:box 1:bay 20, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:21 (port 2I:box 1:bay 21, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:22 (port 2I:box 1:bay 22, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:23 (port 2I:box 1:bay 23, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:24 (port 2I:box 1:bay 24, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:25 (port 2I:box 1:bay 25, SAS, 900.1 GB, OK, spare)

[JEP11]

Yes I think that may be part of the issue, however as far as I can tell whoever installed CentOS 6 on here set it up with 1 array using all 8 x 1 TB drives, so based on what I see in the bios therre is one 7TB drive (raid 5). The reason being I suppose that the OS file systems use only around 150GB and the rest is used as a /data volume (about 6.5 TB)

So the question is if that setup works with CentOS 6, there must be something different with CentOS 7 that doesn't allow that same raid setup without changing the way the drives are defined. If one drive is used for the OS than we will not have as much space left to match what's already there for /data

thx