Issues with UCS C220 M7 servers and M.2 RAID controller

[Eugene T]

All,

My company is in the process of deploying three C220 M7 servers. We purchased three UCS-M2-HWRAID modules along with six 480GB SATA drives. The RAID modules with the drives were installed in the servers.

It took some digging through the server settings before the RAID module became visible. We can see the module in both the BIOS and CIMC and can configure a RAID-1 volume.

However, the server does not recognize the RAID module as a valid boot device. If I add it as a boot device in CIMC, it reports that the BIOS can't detect the device and it never appears as a bootable device.

Is there another setting we missed or some other reason this could be happening?

Thanks!

[Wes Austin]

Are you configuring RAID-1 with the SATA drives or the M.2 drives? The UCS-M2-HWRAID module controls the M.2 disks and you would need to use a MRAID Controller to create RAID via the SATA disks.

Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, you would need to adjust your boot order accordingly.

Can you clarify the information above and confirm what your boot order looks like currently?

Have you tried installing different operating systems and they are all unable to see the RAID as a bootable device?

[Eugene T]

The M.2 drives are SATA. The controller can see both drives and allows me to create a RAID-1 volume. I can't configure the boot order since the controller isn't seen as a boot device.

[Steven Tardy]

Most likely a (all too common) controller seating issue.

• https://bst.cloudapps.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCvy63223
  UCS C-Series/B-Series Mini storage controller (FlexFlash and M.2) seating issues

Push the controller firmly onto the motherboard.

The M2HWRAID requires UEFI boot mode (only supported option on M7).
With UEFI boot mode you don't (typically) configure the BIOS/CIMC to boot from the device, but the OS installation updates the BIOS pointing to the correct boot option.

[Eugene T]

I'm certainly willing to try, but the only concern I have is that the behavior I'm seeing doesn't suggest a seating issue. Everything I've tried can see the controller and the RAID volume on it:

1. Booting with Parted Magic.

2. Booting with an Ubuntu CD (stored in CIMC).

3. The BIOS reports the controller and I can enter the option ROM from the BIOS. It's not like the controller is missing. It's just not being considered a valid boot device.

I'm scheduled to visit the datacenter tomorrow so I can try this and report back.

[Steven Tardy]

Someone else in TAC was saying that error:

Device is not identified by the BIOS. The device will not participate in boot order.

Was due to the server not booting and/or an OS not installed (which adds the boot option to BIOS like I mentioned previously).
I haven't seen that behavior personally, but worth testing.

[Eugene T]

It turns out that the OS installation was the key. I was told by one of the project team working on deploying the servers that they had, in fact, deployed an OS but the server still wouldn't boot. I made the mistake of taking that as gospel and after all the steps the Cisco support agent gave me to try didn't move the needle, I decided to deploy an OS, using the same Ubuntu media they were planning on use. Lo and behold, now the HWRAID controller is bootable and the server boots to it just fine.

Once I did this on three servers, I asked the Cisco support rep if an OS deployment was needed and was told yes.

This is my first time working this in-depth on Cisco hardware and I never saw this behavior on Dell or HP servers. But now that I know, I can waste less time on future deployments. (My organization is largely Cisco UCS all around.)

Thank you everyone for taking the time to comment!