Red Hat installation on HP ProLiant does not detect hard drive

Question

I have an HP ProLiant BL460C Gen8 having real hardware RAID.

I am trying to install Red Hat Enterprise x86_64 bit on an HP ProLiant (iLO 4) server with an Array of 2 hard drives configured as RAID1.

The built in server manager (intelligent provisioning ) allows me to change the setting and configuration of the storage array between RAID0 and RAID1

But RED HAT starts the process of the clean install, and i get to select the time, language, etc. but it stops because it could not detect a storage disk. All it can see is the virtual boot drive that it creates while booting to allow it to run (capacity 256 MB).

I tried to manually/custom add the storage setting but again, all available storage is 250 mb and all found devices is 1.

What am I doing wrong?

Solution 1

HP ProLiant server hardware evolves throughout the lifecycles of long-running Operating System distributions like Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

In your original post, I specifically asked what version of RHEL you were attempting to install. This is important information because Red Hat 6 was introduced well before Generation 8 ProLiant servers. There are standards that apply and also an extensive and annotated HP/RHEL compatibility matrix that provides guidance on what combinations of hardware and OS work properly.

For your specific case, you need at least RHEL 6.1 in order to use this server.

A larger issue here is trying to install old software on modern equipment. RHEL 6.0 is from 2010. It's 2015 now. In your comments, you mentioned installing RHEL 6.3. That's from 2012. Also a bit of a bad choice.

Is there any reason you're not using the current release of Red Hat?

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Also see: RHEL 5.5 server has most devices listed as "Unknown Device"

Solution 2

The RAID controller should present the virtual volume to the BIOS once it's configured. If you go into the BIOS do you see the volume listed in the list of boot devices? If not then there's a problem with the raid configuration.

If the volume is visible in the BIOS then the problem is probably related to missing drivers (although that's unlikely for something as common as HP RAID config). One thing to try is to boot from a Live CD and see if that can detect the volume.

Comments

[ewwhite]

Can you clarify which specific RAID controller is installed in this system? Can you also tell us which version and release of Redhat Linux you're trying to install?

[ewwhite]

No response to this?

[Ahmad Al-Mutawa]

@ewwhite I found another version that had no issues with the hard drive

[ewwhite]

Another version of what?

[Ahmad Al-Mutawa]

Another version of Red Hat. @ewwhite

[ewwhite]

Please share the details.

[Ahmad Al-Mutawa]

@ewwhite I installed Red Hat 6.3 instead of 6.0 and it recognized the hard drive with no problems

[Ahmad Al-Mutawa]

The boot sequence/order menu does not show hard drives among possible options. Does that mean: I need to install drivers? If so, then is there a step-by-step procedure to do that? Advanced thanks

[Martin]

If the raid controller came with the system then you should absolutely not need any drivers for the BIOS to see the volume. Has this system ever had an OS on it using that same raid controller? Have you made sure that you've followed all of the steps for the raid config, especially initializing the volume after creating it?

[Martin]

Depending on your hardware this guide might be useful: h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01608507/… (especially pages 43-46)

[Ahmad Al-Mutawa]

That answer is very well organized and conclusive. I don't have the decision to choose which version of RH to Install. There are requirements by another team to install 6.0, we told them it wont work so they accepted to install 6.3

[Michael Hampton]

@AhmadAl-Mutawa It is not acceptable to run an out of date release of RHEL unless you have an extended update support contract for that server. It puts you at risk due to the lack of drivers, critical bug fixes and security updates.

[Ahmad Al-Mutawa]

@MichaelHampton thanks. I will forward this to our DBA. Much appreciated.