Dell R510 removed USB boot drives for internal SSDs

[Bandion1]

I hope someone can help.
I recently moved my boot drives from a USB stick to 2 internal SSDs.
The issue I currently have, is that i never rebooted the server once I did this, until today.
Currently, the Dell R510, does not see the boot drives, it only sees the USB stick and my 2 NICs.

Is there a way to have the server see the two SSDs at boot devices?
Or, if not, how can I move the boot devices back to the USB?

 

[Bandion1]

I believe the internal SSDs are still connected to the backplane, so BIOS does not see them (reserved for the PERC)
so I need to move the boot back to the USB... not sure on how to do this though

 

[jgreco]

You need to make sure that you are running IT mode firmware on an HBA. Many R510's come with an H700 or H700i controller, which is not suitable for FreeNAS.

The H700i in the internal slot can be replaced by an H200 and that works out fine. The H200 will boot SSD's in the SSD bays just fine.

If you are unfortunate enough to have a 12-bay-plus-two R510, Dell has helpfully provided no place to get power from inside the chassis, and has turned off the mainboard SATA ports in the BIOS anyways.

We've refurbed a bunch of R510's here by adding an H310 in LSI IR mode (*not* the Dell IR mode) along with an Addonics two-M.2-in-a-PCIe-slot adapter for boot devices. Works great.

 

[Bandion1]

I do have the 12 bay plus two R510, with an H200 in IT mode.
I will look into swapping to an H310..
But for now, any suggestions on how I can revert back to a USB stick?
I have created a new bootable USB, but do not have the ability to import my disks to the new installed image.

 

[Bandion1]

We've refurbed a bunch of R510's here by adding an H310 in LSI IR mode (*not* the Dell IR mode) along with an Automattic two-M.2-in-a-PCIe-slot adapter for boot devices. Works great.

Looking at this 310

Amazon.com

any specific two-M.2-in-a-PCIe-slot adapter you would recommend?

 

[jgreco]

any specific two-M.2-in-a-PCIe-slot adapter you would recommend?

I've been using these for about half a decade with good success:

Cool hardware: Addonics AD3M2SPX4 M.2 to PCIe converter

I was a bit bothered by the large number of available SATA ports and one or two free PCIe slots in the VM storage server here. With the boost from 64GB to 128GB of RAM, the 256GB M.2 Samsung XP941 with its AHCI interface for L2ARC was feeling a little dated anyways. M.2 offers several...

www.truenas.com

This gives you a PC board that holds two SATA M.2, basically just powering them and providing SATA plugs which you then can attach to something.

The back side contains an NVMe M.2 slot as a bonus, so you don't actually waste a PCIe slot.

The specific trick I use here is to use the LSI IR firmware (same 20.00.07.00 version as IT) on a Dell H310. You can then use a very short SFF8087 breakout cable, put the Addonics card in the lowest PCIe slot of the R510, put the H310 right above it, with the excess SAS cable coiled underneath the internal RAID card bay. You then stick an H200 in IT mode in to replace the usual H700i, and use that for the backplane.

This leaves you one PCIe slot you could use for 10G ethernet, plus the NVMe SSD option previously mentioned.

I use the IR firmware because I prefer for the HBA to detect a drive failure, so I typically make a virtual disk device out of the boot drives. This seems to be slightly more reliable.

 

[Bandion1]

Thanks, if I can get my system back up, i will look in to doing this. the parts off of Amazon seem fairly inexpensive.

 

[Bandion1]

Thank you for your help.. my system is back online
Will look into getting the H310 and the board next payday

 

[Bandion1]

You need to make sure that you are running IT mode firmware on an HBA. Many R510's come with an H700 or H700i controller, which is not suitable for FreeNAS.

The H700i in the internal slot can be replaced by an H200 and that works out fine. The H200 will boot SSD's in the SSD bays just fine.

If you are unfortunate enough to have a 12-bay-plus-two R510, Dell has helpfully provided no place to get power from inside the chassis, and has turned off the mainboard SATA ports in the BIOS anyways.

We've refurbed a bunch of R510's here by adding an H310 in LSI IR mode (*not* the Dell IR mode) along with an Addonics two-M.2-in-a-PCIe-slot adapter for boot devices. Works great.

Just wanted to say thank you again for your help.
I received all of the parts i needed, and now have freenas running on two m.2 sata drives.