netfinity 4500r - stuck with a RAID rebuild.... 1

[snowwis]

I'm trying to rebuild leftover server for a development testing area and it happens to be an IBM Netfinity 4500r 8656-2ry. At the momnet I'm stuck, it is at a stick figure drawn screen showing a floppy and the diskdrive and arrows indicating to press f1 twice. What am I missing.

I've used the <ctrl> <a> to create logical drive: raid 1 with 2 harddrives and raid 5 with 4 hds..

but when i reboot it goes to that drawn screen?

I have downloaded the ServerRaid support v7, created the server manager and downloaded windows drivers, I also have the adaptec raid install cd. I also followed the "Learning How to Configure RAID 5" that I found on this site, but not the clustering part. I doing one machine at a time.

when using the server manager cd... it will load the linix kerrnel and start the congfiguration application, but it says no controller found..

I've tried different methods of getting it to boot and load an os(win2003 and win2002) but not luck.

at this moment I just want to install an os... I'm not a hardware person.... and really want to understand what I'm doing...

Thanks much.. first time poster.

 

[rclarke250]

well the screen you are describing is the screen that means it can't find an OS, that's all it means, no OS found. <ctrl + I> is for mini-config of the raid...but you said <ctrl + A> this is for the standard scsi controller, not the raid controller. Do you have a raid 4L card? The model you reference is a system that shipped from IBM without DASD, and no raid card, that would be options added by the VAR or the owner after purchase.

If servraid doesn't find a raid card, there is a problem...either the raid card is not in there, or has been disabled. What cards are in the PCI slots? what is the boot sequence? floppy,cdrom,hdd? since it boots from the servraid, what happens when you boot from the windows cd? did you press F6 and install the raid drivers? you must do this. At what point does the install of the OS stop?

 

[snowwis]

there are 2 card in the PCI slots one is the SCSI adaptec and there is another that is much larger, not sure what it is. and for the boot sequence - floppy, cd, hd0. is there another place to set this secuence, other then f1 setup?

And nothing happens when I put the windows OS cd, just a flickering dash in the top left corner.

 

[scsiraid]

Is there anything connected to the Adaptec SCSI card? If not.. why not remove it to minimize interactions.. Can you describe the raid card? How many connectors, internal vs external, battery?, daughterboard?. Do you have access to an older ServeRAID CD? Say version 4? What does the BIOS configurator show the 'state' of the drives you configured to be? OKY? DDD?

 

[snowwis]

thanks for the direction, it got me in the right direction!
I ripped the server apart and look at all the cards, boards and other things inside. (first time I've ever seen the inside of the server) Researched all the model numbers and serial codes.

The real problem was 2 of the servers had IBM Server raid, to the ServerRaid software worked like a charm, as stated above.
the other 3 had a differerant raid card installed (adaptec), found the right tools and off to the races.

Everything is set up an running like a charm.