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IBM Lenovo x3650 M4 Server Baremetal attempt


Wizengamot

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Trying to get an IBM x3650 M4 to work with this as baremetal.  Here are the steps I followed so far.  I am looking for anyone who knows what bootloader I should use (and the most recent compatible .PAT file).  The current ones I am using obviously do not work with this hardware.  I will list the hardware as I know it.

1.  Intel Xeon E5 2620 (2 CPUs total)

2.  The BIOS shows the drivers for Intel Pro 1000 Network adapter.

3.  I have an LSI 9211-8i card installed with a single 8tb drive attached.

4.  The system as 120 GB of RAM installed.

5.  All onboard SATA ports are empty.

6.  The Network Cards MAC addresses were listed in the BIOS, I have copied all four addresses from there for use in grub.cfg.

 

 

Here are the steps I followed.

 

1.  Using OSFMount I mounted the synoboot.img found in the file synoboot-ds918.zip, ensuring it was not read-only.  Based on what I was reading this bootloader is 1.04b.

2.  Edited grub.cfg

     a) created four entries for nic's, using all four MAC address copied from the BIOS

     b) Removed the ESXi boot option by commenting it out at the bottom of grub.cfg.

     c) Generated a serial for a DS916 and placed it within the correct location in grub.cfg.

     d) Found the PID, VID for the USB device to which I planned to write the IMG file and placed them in the correct locations within grub.cfg.  This was double checked to ensure that VID and PID were put in the proper locations.

     e) Saved grub.cfg.

3.  Wrote the resulting image file to the USB stick that I found the VID and PID values for.

4.  Installed the USB stick into the hypervisor boot slot and booted the server.

5.  It booted to the point where it said I should locate the synology using find.synology.com

6.  I have the synology assistant on my computer so I used that to search for the device after waiting for awhile.  I repeated the search after waiting again for about 3 minutes.

No synology was ever found.

 

I ran through the above procedure once before with the modifications required for ESXi and was successful in eventually getting synology going.  The big issue with ESXi was that I could not get that system to recognize my 9211-8i adapter properly and see the drives attached to it (even though it was loaded, adapter showed in devices) it never showed drives.. but I digress.  This is my attempt at using DSM bare metal on the same hardware and I'll just use DSM to power any VMs I may want rather than ESXi.

 

I have several theories but the one that stands out is this:  Is the NIC being detected by the bootloader and if not, is there a way I can get the NIC to be detected and working?  

 

Other question that may or may not be relevant are.

1.  Does the updated 1.04b boot loader support the hardware I have listed above?

2.  If the bootloader does NOT support it, what is the latest bootloader I should try and the corresponding version of DSM that would work?

3.  If I should try a different bootloader and DSM are there any modifications I should make to my steps above (aka things known not to work).  What I mean by this is that during my reading I have seen that some bootloaders had problems with multiple NICs but I saw that was back at 1.02 so I assumed such problems had been resolved by 1.04b, hence my use of 4 nics.

 

I am not looking for someone to essentially do this for me, but rather someone who might know where I am going wrong and point me in the right direction and I most certainly want to thank anyone who takes the time to read this and respond.

 

Thanks,

Wizengamot

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Hello,

 

Have you gone through the FAQspinned tutorials and made a forum search?

 

DS918+ platform is meant for Haswell CPUs and above. If I am not mistaken you have Sandy Bridge CPUs which are lower therefore you can't use loader 1.04b (DS918+). Try with loader 1.03b (DS3615xs or DS3617xs). I recommend using DS3615xs. Read here.

 

On 9/15/2019 at 6:03 AM, Wizengamot said:

Removed the ESXi boot option by commenting it out at the bottom of grub.cfg.

     c) Generated a serial for a DS916 and placed it within the correct location in grub.cfg.

 

None of the above is needed but wont do any harm.

 

On 9/15/2019 at 6:03 AM, Wizengamot said:

3.  I have an LSI 9211-8i card installed with a single 8tb drive attached.

 

I think you need to flash that card to IT mode. You should read this thread if you want all 8 ports to be SATA. Note that these edits to the synoinfo.conf file do not survive a DSM update and need to be redone when you update DSM.

 

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On 9/14/2019 at 4:03 PM, Wizengamot said:

Trying to get an IBM x3650 M4 to work with this as baremetal.  Here are the steps I followed so far.  I am looking for anyone who knows what bootloader I should use (and the most recent compatible .PAT file).  The current ones I am using obviously do not work with this hardware. 

<snip>

Quote

I ran through the above procedure once before with the modifications required for ESXi and was successful in eventually getting synology going.  The big issue with ESXi was that I could not get that system to recognize my 9211-8i adapter properly and see the drives attached to it (even though it was loaded, adapter showed in devices) it never showed drives.. but I digress.  This is my attempt at using DSM bare metal on the same hardware and I'll just use DSM to power any VMs I may want rather than ESXi.

 

Polanskiman is giving you good advice regarding the CPUs, 3615xs DSM base and LSI card configuration.  Additionally, I strongly suggest you reconsider the use of ESXi, for several reasons:

  • Your on-board NIC won't work with baremetal 1.03b - you will need an e1000e compatible NIC like an Intel CT.  But PT card works fine with ESXi.
  • ESXi directly supports LSI.  For best results, use passthrough mode, or if DSM 6.2.x has problems with it, translate the LSI attached drives to your VM via physical RDM.
  • DSM max CPU cores is 8c/16t due to Linux kernel limitation.  You'll need to run DSM as a VM (and run other workloads on the same hypervisor) if you want to use all your system's compute resources
  • I don't recall anyone ever posting a system with 120GB of RAM - while I can confirm 64GB works fine baremetal, I don't know the max RAM supported, but...
  • ESXi free license supports two processor dies with unlimited cores and 128GB of RAM

If you do insist on running baremetal, you will have an easier time starting with loader 1.02b, and DS3615xs DSM 6.1.7, which will definitely support your NIC and HBA.  But even then I would recommend ESXi to fully utilize your hardware.

Edited by flyride
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