MCS-7825-I4 Platform Disc Won't Use RAID1

[paulhawker]

We have an MCS-7825-I4 server which we are installing Unity 7.0 onto.

We have setup the 2 disks as RAID 1 in the BIOS and then boot from the correct Cisco Platform DVD. The Cisco setup then resets the RAID to 2 separate disks instead of RAID 1 and installs the Windows 2003 OS on the first disk only (with 2 partitions) and leaves the 2^nd disk unused.

We then try and set the disks back to RAID1 (mirror) using the installed MegaRAID software that Cisco preinstalls, but it says that it cannot add a disk with an existing boot partition into a RAID array so this isn't possible.

We then try to set it again in the RAID settings on reboot via Ctrl-C but when trying to copy the contents of the first drive to the second, it says there is insufficient space on the 1^st disk to do this and that it will have to erase the disk first in order to re-create the array.

This obviously leaves us once again with a blank server and when booting from the Cisco CD to install it resets the RAID back to 2 separate disks and we go in an endless circle!

Please can someone help us to get this server setup using the Cisco Platform disk in a RAID1 (mirror) configuration?

We do also have a retail Windows 2003 CD, so we can install using this instead of the platform disk if necessary, but I'm uncertain if the Cisco Windows key will work with this, can anyone confirm? Also this disk doesn't have the RAID drivers so does anyone know which drivers I'd need to download to do it this way? Obviously uaing the proper Cisco platform disk is our preference if possible...

Thanks!

[Tommer Catlin]

The platfor disc can be goofy to say the  least.

Here is what i do.

I yank out all the drives except for the first 2 drives.  then I boot with the platform disc.

It will then automatically setup the RAID1 correctly.  You should not need to go into the bios utility to set it up.  If you do, the platform will simply reset it anyways.    The disc has (from what I have seen) has a problem if you have more than 2 drives  in the machine.

After the Platform is done and in windows (and done rebooting x times) I then go ahead and use the GUI utility to setup the other (2) discs as RAID1 and test the mirror after its built.

Once all the MIrrors are tested and working, I then start my Unity install

[Koen Van Impe]

Hi there,

Did you get a solution to your problem?

I'm stuck in the same situation:

- One MCS-7825-I4-CCX1 with 2 x 250 GB on an LSI Logic Raid Controller

- The Cisco platform DVD mentions that it configures RAID, but when it's done, no RAID volume is configured. The system is installed on only the first disk.

- If you configure it manually (Ctrl-C at boot time), you need to reinstall as the disks were cleared. But the platform DVD erases the RAID config again.

- So we're stuck in an endless loop.

I'm most interested to hear if you found a way out.

Best regards,

Koen

[paulhawker]

I managed to get it working but only by using a Ghost CD to copy the whole first disk to an image, manually building the array as RAID1 and then re-ghosting the server back onto the correctly setup drives.

Not an ideal solution but I needed to get it working quickly and this was the quickest method I could think of!