Hi, I have an old HP StoreEasy 1630 (basically an HP DL380 G8). I’ve replaced the Smart Array P822 with an LSI SAS9207-8i controller. The server has 12x3.5" drives in the front and 2x3.5" in the rear. The two rear drives are SSD, where I installed TrueNAS. The 9207 can see all the drives; I can check it in the SAS controller config utility (Ctrl+C during boot). But the problem is that I’m not able to boot from them. The booting ends up with a missing operating system message.
The actual bios on the SAS conroller is 7.39.00 and firmware 20.00.07.00. Thanks for any help.
HP G8’s always have some manner of boot shenanigans.
There is a similar issue on ML310 G8 and Microserver G8’s, where the drive controller would default to trying to boot off the first drive on the SAS controller (or RAID array if configured) - it never provided the option to boot off the SATA port on the motherboards, whether configured in AHCI or RAID mode…
After a firmware update though, when you configured the controllers to run in Legacy mode, it would show up both controllers, and allow selection of either, in order to boot from the motherboard SATA port…
On your POST screen, given that your SSD’s report as HP instead of the ATA designation of the drives on the HBA, and that you’re only seeing one SAS Mass Storage controller in the controller selection, I reckon it’s safe to assume you’re running into the same thing, or at least something related / similar.
For starters, try updating your motherboard BIOS,and check the CMOS battery while you’re at it… those could both be contributing to the issue.
Then check whether the secondary mass storage controller is selectable.
If not yet, then set storage controller mode to Legacy in the BIOS and reboot again… Once back in the BIOS, it should then allow you to select between 2x storage controllers - one being the LSI HBA, and the other being the motherboard’s onboard SATA controller (or represented as some form of HBA / RAID controller perhaps) - where I’d suspect the SSD’s are being run from.
Select the secondary controller for boot priority, and you should then be able to set one of the SSD’s to boot from.
Hope that helps.
Hi, thank you for your response. I think the problem is that all the drives 12+2 are running on the same LSI 9207-8i controller and there’s nowhere set in BIOS(I did update today) what exact drive I want to boot from. Would be ideal to switch the 2 SSD drives in the rear to onboard controller, but the rear backplane is bit weird, it has two sata ports(one data only, second conector is i think sata+power, but power isn’t connected, there’s only one sata on mainboard + one for optical drive, and the backplane is powered with 6pin Molex and I don’t have additional SATA power cables.
How are you accomplishing this? Is the LSI 9207-8i running through an HP expander board as well?
Or have you just got one 8087 cable going to the 12x bays, and the other running to the SSD’s via a 8087-to-SATA breakout cable?
If the backplane has a 6-pin Molex running into it, then simply use plain SATA data cables, to connect the two SATA ports to the motherboard? (Using both the available one + the optical drive one on the motherboard - it’s not like you’re going to need an optical drive?
Perhaps post some pics of what’s shaking in there? I’m sure there’s a simple solution to this.
Edited to add:
If it’s stating that these 14x devices are presented for boot selection (and I’m assuming they’re not individually selectable via the F11 Boot Menu) does the HBA’s interface (Ctrl+C config menu) not allow for you to nominate a drive to be presented for boot?
Or, for that matter, could you not simply swop around the SAS-8087 cables on the HBA to promote the SSD’s to the top of the HBA device listing? That way, if the system boots from the HBA, it should simply default to one of the SSD’s.
Also, why waste large SSD’s on booting TrueNAS? Remember, your boot pool can’t house other data / serve additional functionality… it’s strictly used for boot and system updates only.
Cheapy 60-120GB SSD’s would serve the same purpose - boot them directly from the motherboard SATA ports, then keep the larger capacity SSD’s on the HBA for something actually functional to TrueNAS? sVDEV metadata partition, L2Arc, Plex Metadata mirror, etc etc.
Thank you. I finally managed the drives to boot. I have to relocate them from the rear slots to the front slots 1-2. But I still have no idea why they didn’t want to boot in the rear.
I have done this exact thing with an older HP Lefthand (DL380 G7-ish) SAN gear. An issue I’ve run into is an option in the BIOS. It sounds like that may have helped here. Specifically the Option ROM setting in the BIOS, you need to have it enabled so the drives can enumerate before it gets to the boot order.
G8 I think is the first EFI platform. Basically you enable it on the PCIE port in the G8 BIOS IIRC. When you find the option and enable it, you may also have to go back. If it worked, you’ll see that LSI loading screen before the boot screen, then it should show up as a valid boot device.