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Need help with basic storage setup - B200M5 and 600GB SAS

rmasteller
Level 1
Level 1

I've never configured internal storage on a UCS blade.  We have a pair of B200-M5s that will get Win2016 Server loaded.  I want to RAID1 the two internal physical drives, but present the O/S with a 100GB boot LUN and a second LUN for whatever else.  I'm lost in the configuration - Disk Group Policies, Local LUNs, Storage Profiles, Storage Policies, Controller Definitions, .....

 

I'm used to just setting up a pair of SD cards for VMware install.  Storage Noob needs help!

 

Thanks

1 Accepted Solution

Accepted Solutions

I thought I should come back and state the solution.  In the SCSI controller board BIOS available during POST, you can get in and configure the mirror set of drives, then on that mirror set you can create logical disks.  We took the 600GB mirror and made it 100/500 logical drives.  This showed up in the local Windows Server 2016 install as a 100GB drive and a 500GB drive, which is what the Windows admin was expecting.  Thanks.

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rmasteller
Level 1
Level 1
When I say "a 100GB boot LUN and a second LUN", a better term may be virtual disk or logical disk. Thanks.

Are you using M.2 storage controller/disks? If so, you need to use "Embedded Local Disk" in the boot policy. This sometimes also requires creating a Storage profile to map this LUN.

 

If you can provide some additional details on your setup, maybe we can provide some guidance.

 

 

Hi Wes. Thanks for the reply. The equipment inventory shows the conroller as:
Name : Cisco FlexStorage 12G SAS RAID Controller
Model : UCSB-MRAID12G

And the two disks as:
Product Name : 600GB 12G SAS 15K RPM SFF HDD

Are there additional details I should provide?

Without a storage profile configured for the service profile, just using local disk configuration policy, I was able to present a mirrored 600-GB device for the Win2016 Server to use. But, the Windows admin said he wants the OS to see a 100GB drive and a 500GB drive, so his C: drive is only partition on disk. D: drive should be remainder of space for app install. Can I do that?

Thanks for that info.

 

If Windows is able to see the 600GB LUN, you are half way there. During install, you can use Windows to partition the drives into your 100GB boot and 500GB data partitions and then your Windows team will see two partitions of the RAID 1 disk.

 

Similar to this procedure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8UN1njjDkM

 

Good Luck

Wes,

Yes, the Windows admin saw the 600GB disk and partitioned his C: drive and a copule other drives from it. But, he says it is not best practice. So, what he's asking for is for the hardware (controller?) to pre-partition the mirrored set so when he goes to create his first drive, he can put C: on it's own 100GB device.

He is used to VMs, not physical servers.  In VMs, we give 100GB virtual disk for C: and then other virtual disks for whatever else is required.  Can we provide what he is expecting to see with this hardware?  Thanks.

eric.ahernandez
Level 1
Level 1

Hi,

 

Well there's a lot of things you have todo for your scenario!

First of all, for your Boot-from-SAN LUN, which protocol are you using? iSCSI or Fibre Channel?, depending on this you will need to define the addressing pools (MAC Pools, IP Pools and IQN Pools in case of iSCSI, WWNN and WWPN in case of FC). Then you will need to configure the necessary iSCSI vNICs or vHBAs for the service profile of that server.

 

After this you need to define a Boot policy in which you will add the target IP/IQNs or WWNs for the storage (see BootP image). Also, you can check out this video (even though it's from like 5 years) but it's essentially the same just the GUI is different.

 

https://ucsguru.com/2013/12/31/cisco-ucs-boot-from-san-video-walktrough/

 

For the physical drives you need to configure a Local Disk Policy using RAID 1 mirrored. 

Eric,

Sorry for my poor use of terms. I'm not booting from SAN. These two 600GB drives are internal to the B200M5 blade. There are a few policies and things that refernce "Local LUN", so I thought that was local to the blade - internal disk. That's when I wrote above maybe I should be saying virtual disk or logical disk.

A co-worker is trying to help me and he's trying to configure this in the MegaRaid controller's bios instead of in UCS Manager. Is that the solution?

Thanks.

I thought I should come back and state the solution.  In the SCSI controller board BIOS available during POST, you can get in and configure the mirror set of drives, then on that mirror set you can create logical disks.  We took the 600GB mirror and made it 100/500 logical drives.  This showed up in the local Windows Server 2016 install as a 100GB drive and a 500GB drive, which is what the Windows admin was expecting.  Thanks.

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