Ubuntu 14 04 Installation Issue on UCS C240 M5

[Praveen_Kumsagi]

Hello team,

We are unable to install Ubuntu 14 04 on Cisco UCS C240 M5 server which has RAID configuration. 

RAID Controller Info: RAID bus controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID Tri-Mode SAS3516 (rev 01)

We are unable to find driver for above mentioned RAID card at Cisco Software download portal for Ubuntu 14.04 version

RAID: UCSC-RAID-M5

Product Name: UCS C240 M5S

PID: UCSC-C240-M5S

Tried to enable JBOD still saw disk detection issue.

Our end goal is to install Ubuntu 14.04 either through RAID or JBOD or other available options. 

Please help

Thank you in Advance. 

[Kirk J]

Greetings.

You will want to check the interop matrix at https://ucshcltool.cloudapps.cisco.com/public/# 

I doubt the older 14 versions have been tested with the M5s, and likely don't natively have the right megaraid sas drivers installed.

Kirk...

[Praveen_Kumsagi]

Hi Kirk,

Really appreciate for your response. We went through compatibility matrix with UCS C240 M5 model and Ubuntu 14.04 is not listed. Ubuntu 18.04 works perfectly without any issue. So Ubuntu 18.04 has correct driver for this particular system. 

For this particular use case we have to get Ubuntu 14.04 working and 18.04 doesn't help us as of now. 
we have already purchased few servers of C240 M5 model and we have to get it working at any cost. lol

Also, I went through every Inventory list for drivers of all releases which are available in the cisco portal so far no luck. 

There are drivers of USCS-RAID-M5 for RHEl, VMWARE and other OS but none for Ubuntu 14 04 in your portal. Please have a look at the attached image. 
If I can get hold of LSI, UCSC-RAID-M5 driver for Ubuntu14.04 then we can embed that into Ubuntu ISO and take it from there. Please see if you can do anything about this. 

Thanks,

Praveen

[Kirk J]

The problem is exactly that... there is no 14 level driver for that raid controller.

Also, you will likely hit other unsupported hardware issues (i.e. CPUs) that came out a lot later than the 14. versions.

https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201803-26184/

Only 16 and above list driver related for M5s.

We see other customers using old apps tied to old OS such as Windows 2008, which are not supported on current/recent hardware, and the primary option is to insert a supported hypervisor, and build the old OS in a guestVM.

Kirk...

[Praveen_Kumsagi]

Thanks Kirk for suggestion, We will look into that option.