SOLVED Dell R510 HBA Truenas Disaster

[Vanadiumjade]

Hi,

I have a dell r510 and have brought a second hand h200 HBA card.
Problem is that the card has been flashed with IT mode and as a result there is no way to define what drive in the HBA pool to boot from.
So while I can install truenas on any drive in the pool I am unable to boot into truenas.

(I have a dell r910 with h200 card and has factory dell firmware that you can configure a boot device from the HBA pool)

There are some sata ports on the the mainboard but there are no spare power sources....
So I did some looking around and found you can get PCIE to m2 adapters... brought PCIE adapter and m2 drive and again was able to install truenas but doesnt show in the boot options!


So other than sourcing another h200 card, I wondered if you could boot from a USB then boot into m2 drive? is that possible.... probably a dumb idea... any better ideas please save me!



Thanks in advance

 

[Samuel Tai]

I wondered if you could boot from a USB then boot into m2 drive? is that possible.... probably a dumb idea... any better ideas please save me!

Not only possible, but recommended. That's how I boot my box. Your PCI-E M.2 adapter is also lacking a boot ROM.

 

[Vanadiumjade]

Great how do it set this up?

Install on USB?
Then how to I define what device the install should move too?

Or are you suggesting just boot and run truenas from USB?

 

[Samuel Tai]

You'll need a thumb drive for the ISO installer. You'll need a USB to M.2 SSD for the install drive. Install from the thumb drive to the USB to M.2 SSD. Then set the USB to M.2 SSD as the boot drive in the BIOS.

 

[jgreco]

Most of the preflashed IT-mode H200's out there were flashed by idiots who omitted the BIOS. The BIOS ROM for the H200 will indeed let you set a boot device, and you can use one of the R510's internal SSD bays for the boot device (at, of course, the cost of a bay). But only if the BIOS ROM has been flashed onto the board, of course.

The 12-drive R510 is a miserable beast in that it has vanishingly poor options for boot devices, because the internal SATA ports are disabled and there's really no place to get power. In addition to @Samuel Tai 's suggestion of a USB-based SSD, you can use an IT- or IR-flashed H310 along with a PCIe card to mount some SATA SSD's. This gives you some additional flexibility to add an NVMe drive to use for jails or L2ARC as well.

 

[Vanadiumjade]

You'll need a thumb drive for the ISO installer. You'll need a USB to M.2 SSD for the install drive. Install from the thumb drive to the USB to M.2 SSD. Then set the USB to M.2 SSD as the boot drive in the BIOS.

Okay.... Swapped the pcie adapter to USB dongle style.

Boom it worked!

Omg thanks so much. It's dumb there is a dongle but I guess you pull the stick and if the drives are encrypted then it's locked down. So kinda cool.

Again thanks!!!

 

[Vanadiumjade]

Most of the preflashed IT-mode H200's out there were flashed by idiots who omitted the BIOS. The BIOS ROM for the H200 will indeed let you set a boot device, and you can use one of the R510's internal SSD bays for the boot device (at, of course, the cost of a bay). But only if the BIOS ROM has been flashed onto the board, of course.

The 12-drive R510 is a miserable beast in that it has vanishingly poor options for boot devices, because the internal SATA ports are disabled and there's really no place to get power. In addition to @Samuel Tai 's suggestion of a USB-based SSD, you can use an IT- or IR-flashed H310 along with a PCIe card to mount some SATA SSD's. This gives you some additional flexibility to add an NVMe drive to use for jails or L2ARC as well.

Yeah it was preflashed without bios .... Booo.

I thought the internal 2.5 drives would be perfect for mirrored truenas boot drives.
But they are part of hba array so if you can't set the boot drive your stuffed.

So dongle with m2 drive will need to do. And as I said above if disks are encrypted you can pull the dongle and data is secure.

Yeah pretty happy with my little lab now, need to buy some more drives for the r510 as it's just got stuff I had laying around.
Didnt want to commit to buying drives until I got the r510 in a usable state.

I haven't researched improving performance yet.. but using the pcie adapters for m2s would work perfectly I suspect. Just no bootie.


Thanks :)

 

[jgreco]

You can always flash the LSI BIOS from TrueNAS if you need.

 

[danb35]

You can always flash the LSI BIOS from TrueNAS if you need.

It surprises me how often this possibility is ignored--people are building DOS boot USBs or dropping to the EFI shell, when sas2flash is installed in the base system by default.

 

[jgreco]

Didn't used to be that way. Plus, it is frickin' TERRIFYING to do brain surgery on oneself. Updating the firmware on the controller causes a reset, which probably isn't something you want to do with a mounted pool. This, combined with a lack of inclusion of the appropriate firmware images on the host, makes the usefulness of sas2flash on the NAS somewhat questionable.

 

[danb35]

Didn't used to be that way.

It has been for quite a long time--by 9.2, but it wasn't in 8.0.

Updating the firmware on the controller causes a reset, which probably isn't something you want to do with a mounted pool.

Agreed. I've done it without harm, but it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do.