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HP Microserver Gen8 - bare metal; BIOS reset; good practice


sandisxxx

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HP Microserver Gen8, was running on SSD MS Server 2012 + hyper-V

 

I have decided(after my SSD failed) to rather go for bare metal build.

I know that:

1. Have to update firmware to the last

2. Switch to AHCI mode

3. There is a BIOS reset bug

 

My questions:

1. Is there any real way to overcome the BIOS reset or still I have to save the current settings as default?

2. Does XPEnology spin down the disks when in AHCI mode? - I know that SMART should work within XPENology in AHCI mode

3. Does the automatic power off/power on feature work on Gen8 as bare metal?

4. What XPEnoboot version should I use and what Synology pat file to install? - someone has said, that there is already bootloader for the DSM6?

5. currently I have setup Hyper-V with disks in offline mode attached to Xpenology VM as pass thru(using the HP Raid controller in RAID mode, each disk is separate Raid0 array), can I somehow use these disks with no changes, just by attaching them to the Bare metal XPEnology installation without loosing data?

 

I haven't found any real How-To guide how to install XPEnology on Gen8 as bare metal, if you can paste any link, I would be thankful.

Thanks all for replies.

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Hi Sandisk

 

I've recently installed a bare metal Gen8 xpenology and haven't had any major issue yet.

 

I'll describe what I did the best I can remember because also read a lot and got so confused at one point.

 

 

I downloaded a very recent xpenoboot image, that post had a VMware file and the iso img for bare metal.

 

Flashed image to a USB drive without modification

Set up ahci and USB boot in BIOS

Stuffed 2 HDDs in server for this test

Booted from USB and the fist time it installed fine using default install option from xpenoboot, however I wanted to change the s/n and Mac address, so I reboot and this time I selected force install otherwise it would boot DSM as normal.

At the boot prompt I pressed a key to get xpenoboot console (sorry I don't remember how, i can look up the guide I followed)

At xpenoboot console I manually changed the Mac and S/N and it persisted , I guess you can skip this step if somehow the .img can be extracted, modify grub.cfg file and repack the image...

After changing the Mac and S/N to a valid pair I reinstalled DSM successfully. I used a downloaded DSM file because installing from internet looked like it was stuck, so I preferred to download DSM file in advance.

 

Now for your questions:

1. I think that BIOS bug is only present if you try to set a power-on schedule within DSM. As far as I remember power-off schedule works but power-on resets your BIOS.

 

2. Dunno about the spinning, I'll check the disks to see what SMART test says.

 

3. Didn't even tested this due to the BIOS bug, I assume power off does, a possibility is to WoL via iLo network.

 

4. Let me look this up for you and also for my own reference if I need to reinstall the server.

 

5. DSM will wipe your disks , please consider it, in fact DSM is installed in the HDDs, not in the USB drive. I used 2 small drives 160GB for this test.

 

Edit: re read the question, on an early attempt, I created 2 virtual drives to DSM ant it recognized them fine, I think that if you set up passthrough then DSM would get full access to the drives and will wipe them. I would not recommend using HP raid controller due to all the posts I read against using it (although it was in freenas installs) plus you would get an additional point of failure.

 

I formatted my drives within DSM using ext4 just so data would be available booting from Ubuntu if needed in some point.

 

Edit2: First post and I can't believe I typed this much on my cellphone.

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First of all, thanks for such detailed answer Technodrone.

I will backup all the data(roughly 3TB) and start the bare metal process as you describe.

Is there any reason why to change the MAC and s/n?

I definetly won't try the DSM6 I really do not miss any features in the 5.2 version.

I will use some USB to boot and maybe a 500GB 2,5" 7200RPM drive for the Synology system apps etc.

I have modified my Gen8 to fit a SSD drive (in the ODD bay) that currently is dying and have no better use of that 500GB drive.

Then I will seat 3 data disk drives to the bays.

Please check for me if the disks can spin down when not used.

My previous custom built XPEnology was able to do that and that is very handy, because 3 disks make quite some noise and drain quite some power.

The auto power off/on feature I have used years ago on my Zyxel NAS and was absolutely perfect(saves power).

Again, thanks for reply.

Can anyone else comment please, if the HDD spin down feature is supported when using AHCI bare metal ?

Peace

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Thanks for reply, I have used the latest standard 5967.1 XPEnoboot image with the proper .pat file.

I can confirm, the disks are spinning down as expected(which saves a lot of power per year).

Unfortunately, I can not check the auto-off feature, because it asks to enable WOL.

When I check the checkboxes to enabel WOL on both LANs and click Apply, it just does not apply the changes.

So I can not enable this feature, but I can live with that for now.

Thanks for your response.

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