Installing Server Edition 9.0 SP5 on R620 with extra drives 1

[kyle555]

I've been racking my brain trying to help some colleagues install server edition on an R620 with an extra drive for Contact Recorder.

Sometimes the install works, but it never sees the extra drive, and other times, you scrap the install by trying to add the extra drive and get no bootable media.

Does anybody have any tips about using the PERC RAID controller in the server to make it play happy with the anaconda installer Avaya is using with the Server Edition 9.0 SP5 DVD?

So, I looked at Avaya SOLN254736 - and it says the following:

1. For 9.0 SP2, an additional HDD must be added prior to running ignition or reinstalling system software
2. For 9.0 SP2, if an additional HDD is added, the mount path name must be /CSIPORec
3. For 9.0 SP3 onwards, adding an additional HDD after ignition is supported
4. For 9.0 SP3 an additional HDD must have the mount path name starting with /additionalhdd
5. If an additional HDD is required for a server in a VMWare environmet it must be added prior to ignition for both 9.0 SP2 and 9.0 SP3

Now, the knowledge base is for "9.0" and doesn't seem to include these little nuances between service packs. Further, the install documentation for 9.0 SP5 has as steps:

1.Add your extra drive, configure in the PERC RAID controller
2.Install software
3.Mount that extra drive in the ignition process

Now, I have 2 drives in RAID 1 for the operating partition (600GB each) and a single drive in RAID 0 for the Contact Recorder (300GB).

Ignition never sees "additional hardware" of a drive to initialize. Not a big deal, I saw that after SP3 on a server and not VMWare that you can add it in the system settings from Web Manager afterward - but I can't - it still sees no hardware.

The weird part for me is that when using the install DVD that it never prompts which drive you want to install on - your 600GB RAID1 disks or your 300GB disks - it just goes. And the documentation reads in the tone that there is only a single hard drive in the system. Neither the docs nor the installer ask you to specify whether you want to install on the original disk or the new one you just added.

So, we tried turning off the extra disk in the RAID controller, install on the primary disk, then add the new disk to a new RAID0 to hope the server would see it after the OS installed (before and after ignition) and neither ignition nor web manager see the new disk after the fact.

So, IP Office wizards...
It shows up in Linux with a pvscan and a vgscan as part of the root volume group named "rootvg" along with the other primary disk, though it is not considered to be available disk space according to the linux partitions with something like a "df -h".

If it helps, the server was shipped from Avaya with the 2 RAID1 drives in there, and preconfigured with software which was porked and needed a reimage after trying to add the other RAID 0 drive.

That all being said, does anyone know if adding an extra drive in a separate RAID 0 on a R620 Server Edition should appear as being part of the rootvg? My gut is telling me that a combination of bad documentation, a bad installer, and a bug in the anaconda CentOS installer is leaving some data on these disks despite wiping/recreating the array and reinstalling and that left over data is tripping up the automagic adding of a new disk.

I'm sure if I had it in front of me that I could eventually screw around in Linux enough to get it mounted, but I want to do this by the book. I don't trust it enough to be reloaded from scratch via backups a few years down the road and have the tech doing the job then totally stuck because Kyle used some weird mount point as a shortcut to get around a bad installer.


I would appreciate any feedback, ideas, or otherwise leave this thread here for anyone with similar problems to vent.

Thanks.

 

[kyle555]

bump of desperation?

 

[kyle555]

And we got lucky. Our brilliant install tech had the idea that after creating the new RAID0 device in the controller, instead of following the instructions and "pressing OK if prompted, press ESC and reboot the system", he instead went back into the first array of 2 drives in RAID 1. And lo and behold, the controller had some stop watch hourglass progress bar thing.

And ignition recognized the new drive and everyone lived happily ever after.

So, to summarize, the RAID controller is a pain, and the documentation may very well miss a finer point in there that will waste many hours of your life.

 

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