HP ProLiant DL380 can't see non-RAID hard drives

jbruyet · 07-26-2012, 10:49 AM

Hey all, I'm using an HP ProLiant DL380 as a Linux test machine. It's loaded with six 72 gig drives and it's running Debian 6. I had all six drives configured in a big RAID5 array (configured from the HP hardware) and everything was working just fine. I decided to do some experimentation with MDADM so I dropped from a six disk RAID5 to a three disk RAID5. The RAID works just fine but now the other three disks have turned invisible -- running fdisk -l just shows me the RAID. I've never had a ProLiant server that wasn't configured with a RAID array so I don't know if this is an HP issue or a Linux issue. Anyone have any ideas? Googling this pretty much just gives me the fdisk command options.

Thanks,

Joe B

jefro · 07-26-2012, 03:29 PM

So you used the hardware raid card's bios to configure single drives? Does the controller allow single disk's to be used?

Or are these drives not on a hardware raid controller?

chrism01 · 07-26-2012, 08:56 PM

If it s HW raid, you'll need the Product support Pack from HP, then see cmds like hpacucli.
Normally that's a HW raid, so the std Linux OS cmds will not work.

If that was SW raid, then the mdadm cmds should work http://linux.die.net/man/8/mdadm

Gemini5865 · 07-27-2012, 10:41 PM

I have 6 DL380 G2s and 2 380 G3s. All running various Linux versions. The easiest way without installing HP utils is just to reboot and re-enter the HP Array Config on startup and change the drive config again. I have found DL380s are perfect to play around with as a NAS box. I normally use 2 of 6 as a RAID1 OS drive and the other 4 as a RAID5. As yet I haven't been able to get the HP hpacutil to work on any of my boxes, but then again I haven't tried that much either.

chrism01 · 07-29-2012, 06:44 PM

We've got DL380's.
I got the psp-8.73.rhel5.i686.en.tar.gz from HP website and installed a few utils from it (it contains rpms).
For hpacucli, I mainly use these 2 variations

Code:

# show physical disk layout
hpacucli controller slot=1 pd all show

#output
Smart Array P400 in Slot 1

   array A

      physicaldrive 2I:1:1 (port 2I:box 1:bay 1, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:2 (port 2I:box 1:bay 2, SAS, 72 GB, OK)

   array B

      physicaldrive 1I:1:5 (port 1I:box 1:bay 5, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:6 (port 1I:box 1:bay 6, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:3 (port 2I:box 1:bay 3, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:4 (port 2I:box 1:bay 4, SAS, 72 GB, OK)


# Show logical disk layout
hpacucli controller slot=1 ld all show

#output
Smart Array P400 in Slot 1

   array A

      logicaldrive 1 (68.3 GB, RAID 1, OK)

   array B

      logicaldrive 2 (205.0 GB, RAID 5, OK)

If you do a hot-disk swap, the ld version shows you percentage completion continually, the pd version afterwards confirms success or not.
'pd' also shows 'there but not used/active' disks eg hot spares.

PS the other way to check (especially if using an MSA, is to use the ILO access).

jbruyet · 08-18-2012, 07:22 PM

--> jefro, I don't think I can configure single drives on the controller but then again I didn't try. I didn't think I was going to be able to do a RAID 1 because my options were 5, 1+0 and 0. However, when I selected only two drives the utility automatically went to 1+0 and now I have a RAID 1 set up.
-->ChrisM, I'll check the HP site for the utilities. I haven't used RPMs on a Debian server. I guess I'll Google how to do that.

Thanks,

Joe B