UCS C260 Raid configuration

[miket]

I have a question more clarification. I have a UCS C260 filled with 1 TB drives. I have two controllers. In the service/config guide it isn't quite clear on how to configure the arrays. When you go into auto configuration on the WEBBIOS configuration screen and  use New configuration, it only shows 8 drives and you need to select a contorller,  

when selected second adapter it only shows 8 drives as well and they are drrives 0-7 the same as the first adapter. I suspect that is normal. I guess my question is has anyone done this and how did they do it.. Do you set the first adapter and drives as bootable and I gguess it is the array that you intstall VMWARE on.

Usually in the 210'c I create two arrays. I use  200 gig for Vmware to isolate it on its iwn array, then the rest for what ever I am building. This is my first 260C so thats why the confusion.. I also see the 260 c can come in three different configurations one that has a single adapter, one with two adapters and I forget the third.

Does this makes sense.    And any help or guidance would be great.

Thanks       

[David McFarland · Accepted solution]

Mike,

This might help

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/c/hw/C260/install/raid.html#wpxref36524 go to table C1

The C260 has two different styles of drive bays, eiher 2 independent bays of 8 drives, or 2 drive bays of 8 drives fronted with an expander. If you have the expander version, one Raid controller will have access to all 16 drives.

It sounds like you have the independant drive bays with a separate Raid controller going to each drive bay giving you access to each individual 8 HDD drive bay.

During POST, you are seeing two instances of the LSI WebBIOS utility that correspond to the two Raid controllers installed. Each instance of the utility will allow you to configure each separate drive bay

Dave

[miket]

David, thanks for the quick response. I will verify tomorrow but now you mention it I may have seen two istances of webbios.  I do know when I did go into one I had option to select adapter.

I suspect what you said is what I seen I just didn't notice it.I looked at the doc over and over and it didn't guide line up.

Like I aid I seem to remember it did go twice thru boot.

I will update tomorrow.. Thank You

Again thanks for

[miket]

You are right I should have looked closer I have two 9261-8T controllers. I booted several times and can't see the second boot.When I get into WEBBIos configuration I can select adapter but it seems to keep going to first controller. I pulled the LSI configuration guide and the screen shots do not line up and that is not unique,

I wil go ahead and load up teh server and go back afet VMWARE is loaded and see if I can then select the and configure the second adapter.

If you and any ideas please let me know.

So you are correct

[David McFarland]

Mike,

If possible, would you trace out the mini-SAS cables going from the Raid controllers to the drive bays.

Your config should match up with figure C-2 in the above config guide. Looking at the guide, it shows each controller having access to 4 HDD's in each bay. i.e. controller 1 has access to Bay 1, HDD's 1-4 and Bay 2 HDD's 5-8, and controller 2 having access to Bay 1 HDD's 5-8 and Bay 2 HDD's 1-4.

You might be able to see if this is the case, but, it'll take a bunch of reboots. Remove 1-4 from Bay 1, reboot and go into the WebBIOS and see if the above scheme holds true. Even before you go into WebBIOS, you'll see the HDD's in POST for each controller. I guessing here, but, I'd think one controller should see 8 HDD and the other controller should only see 4 HDDs

So each controller does have access to 8 HDDs, but, split 4 per Bay. There must be some High Availabilty reason behind this setup.

I'd like to think once you've configured both WebBIOSs and created 2 virtual luns, you'll see two luns when you being your ESXi installation.

Sorry, I don't have actual hands on experience with this confgurations and I don't have enough parts available to me to right now duplicate this configuration. But, I have verified how it should work with the Tech doc folks. We're also shut down in a bit and I can't borrow anything until Jan.

Sorry,

Dave

[David McFarland]

Steve,

Sorry, my mistake. After checking the C-2 Diagram again and the doc team, each controller connects to a single drive bay.

Controller in slot 5 connects to both ports of Drive Bay 1 and the contoller in slot 3 connects to both ports of Drive Bay 2. This does make more sense.

Dave

[miket]

David, I verified, my model has two raid cards , slots 3 and 5., It matches the wiring in appendix C example 2. Two Nonexpanders and two raid controllers with 16 drives.

Also in the Cisco Unifoed Communications

Mine start page 11, set up raid for Cisco UCS C260 rack mount server TRC,  It states that this configuration that I have has 16 drives present on the system are set up as two seperate 8-dive Raid 5 logical volumes so at least we are on right track. I tried ten times but it only boots one WEBBios and no matter what I do it doesn't seem to setup the second adapter. It does hsow up on boot so maybe I am doing something wrong so I will try Monday and post it

[miket]

David after many weeks I finally got to it. Using the CLI comands then the WEB bios I made progress. I think the big issue is perception, when you select adapter one , then drives 0-7 and create DG0 and dtart init, then you select adapter 2 and everything looks same drives 0-7 , create DG0 and understandable beacuse they are two seperate controllers however there should be something or someway to tell what adapter.

It is a LSI GUI issue more than anything. so now I am past that  I have a question how do I load ESX-i, there is no DVD.

Thanks for the comments

Mike