Netfinity 5000 raid won't boot

[solfanck]

I changed some drives in one of our servers nad re-created the raid 5 using serveraid boot cd ver. 7.00. It updated my bios to version 7.10.18 and my Firmware is 6.10.24. Now that the logical drive is created, fdisked and formated it won't boot from the raid. I think I need to go back to a lower version like 6 for the bios but IBM does not have it on there web site. Can anyone help me with this problem? Do I have the right idea or have I done something else wrong?

N-5000 8659-5RY
Serveraid 3L
current bios 7.10.18
current FW 6.10.24
setup raid 5 no HS
O/S IBM PC-DOS 7

TIA

Terry

 

[ibmtech65]

Not sure I understand what you mean that it does not boot from the raid? If you fdisk and formated the drives then there would be nothing on them to boot from. You would need to install an OS.

Also if you booted with servraid manager support CD v7.00 there is no way it can update your firmware to v7.10.18 because it is not going to be on the v7.00 CD. Also it would do the firmware and bios both, not just one or the other.

 

[solfanck]

I may be wrong about the CD version (txt file said version 7.00) but it did update to 7.10.18 and FW to 6.10.24. As for booting I Fdisk and format to boot to command.com IBM PC-DOS 7 as it is faster than formating and installing dos until I get the boot problem solved. The system just sits there with a flashing cursor after scanning the floppy drive. Do I have to do something to set the 3L to be the boot device? I compaired the setup to one of our other N-5000's (bios and 3L bios) they are both identical yet it will not boot from the raid. I am going to go bald if this keeps up

Terry

 

[solfanck]

Just so you all know what exactly I have done and in what order.
All 3 drives were low-leveled using the plainer scsi on the N-5000 (removed 3L and turned on plainer scsi to do the LL format). Now this is what I did after that, feel free to call me an idiot if I did any thing wrong in the following list as I have never configured a raid before.

-Turn off server
-Install Serveraid 3L in slot 5
-Boot setup and disable plainer scsi
-Boot serveraid cd and do a level 5 quick setup.
-wait about an hour for the drives to finish synchronizing
-Insert and boot from dos floppy
-Fdisk drive with a 200 meg partition and set it active
-format drive with /s command
-reboot when finished
-stand there and pull hair out because it won't boot the raid.

So... What have I missed here?

Terry

 

[ibmtech65]

You would need the device driver for the 3L for what ever OS you are going to put on the machine. I dont believe that just formating the disk with the /s command is going to do any good . Working with raid is much different then just a single drive since you have a logical drive and the OS is going to need the device driver loaded so it knows how to talk to the raid card. Look in the books folder on the raid CD, devdrv.pdf.

 

[solfanck]

Well, That is how are servers boot. They load dos and then load Netware (Netware has the raid driver loaded) All I did to setup our other servers was to Fdisk and format, the only difference is that I did not do the raid setup from scratch. So If it looks like I am doing this wrong, How do I configure the machine to boot DOS like our other 2 servers?

I am still wondering if I missed something here during the raid setup.. Should I be doing something extra between the sync. finishing and Fdisk/format?. I can boot from a floppy and access C: and see the files it just won't boot to C:.

Terry

 

[solfanck]

OK... Well lets talk about missing something. It would be nice if IBM would maby just mention that you MUST Low-level format the drive with the DOS ServeRaid software first (spent 3 dyas looking on the net and reading PDF files for ServeRaid and no mention of this anyware). If you don't do this THE DRIVES WILL NOT BOOT ! So If anyone has this problem in the future, that is how to fix it.

Terry