Configuring RAID1 on HP Proliant Microserver N54L / Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS

Question

I've bought a N54L and fitted two 3GB drives. Keen to get set up with RAID1.

• BIOS: SATA controller mode set to "RAID"
• RAID Option ROM utility: both physical drives set up as one logical drive

When I came to install Ubuntu (14.04.1), both drives appeared during the setup process. I was only expecting to see the logical drive, although I'm a complete novice with RAID.

I've read that the HP Proliant Microservers don't have "proper" RAID support, and require some kind of driver to be installed. I've tried a few HP utilities from the following apt repo:

deb http://downloads.linux.hp.com/SDR/repo/mcp wheezy/current non-free

On installation, most say "server not supported"

Would appreciate your advice.

Solution

Lots of similar questions in a short period...

Ubuntu isn't well-suited to vendor-specific hardware support (probably the vendors' fault, but it is what it is). The HP ProLiant N54L server you have has binary drivers for the storage array that are only available for Windows and Red Hat.

See: Cant find my harddrives in ubuntu installation?

The RAID controller in this particular Microserver is a fakeraid controller. You're better off using software RAID or fitting an HP Smart Array p410 controller into the server for proper hardware RAID.