The mission if you choose to accept is to install Windows 2000 on a HP ML310 G4. Sound simple, except that HP does not support this configuration. To make things even more interesting, onboard SATA RAID!
Windows 2000 does not support SATA or SATA RAID natively. You have to provide a driver at the start of installation using F6. Windows 2003 does not have this problem. Since HP does not support this configuration, there are no drivers available. Using the Windows 2003 driver at HP website is able to recognize the RAID volume but on reboot to start the Windows based installer, it gave a blue screen. Strangely this is an Adaptec driver.
On bootup, it shows "Intel 82801GR SATA RAID Controller". Searching through Intel website, reveals that it is part of the ICH7R chipset and that the controller does not use AHCI mode. Downloaded Intel Matrix Storage Manager in various versions. Some can't recognize the SATA RAID controller, some could except it lists all the physical drives!
After two days of fruitless search, time to ask for help. A colleague remembered a similar situation and suggested using Adaptec drivers. Downloaded Adaptec's ICH7R drivers and hey presto! The installer can recognize the RAID volume and installed the operating system successfully.
After installation, in the Device Manager, there was a long list of question marks as Windows 2000 does not have the appropriate drivers. Installed Proliant Support Pack (PSP) 7.7 for the ML310 G4. Fixed almost of it except for USB controller.
Time to test the RAID functionality. Pulled out and push back one of the harddisks and during bootup it shows as RAID degraded. Login to HP Systems Management webpage, it showed nothing degraded. Started the Array Controller Unit (ACU), it reported none found. It seems that HP Systems tools cannot manage the RAID card. This is going to cause a really big problem.
Since I am using Adaptec drivers that work and Intel drivers can't, time to go fully Adaptec. Downloaded Adaptec Storage Manager v 5.00.16806. It recognizes the SATA RAID card and the degarded RAID volume!. Started the RAID rebuilding. After 24 hours it has completed 68%. Hmmmm.
This chipset relies on the mainboard CPU to do all the hard work. Whereas in a standard RAID card, there is a seperate dedicated CPU for the RAID computation processes.
So at the end of the day, I end up using Adaptec driver and storage manager for an Intel chipset. The RAID driver is operating in AHCI mode! Makes you wonder what in the world is going on.
Comments (8)
Surprise, surprise. I got my first request for assistance based on this post.
Well for those that are wondering, the SATA drivers can be downloaded here. ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/
Posted by AL | August 19, 2007 9:06 PM
Posted on August 19, 2007 21:06
Thank you for your very valuable article! i just had quite the same problem installing Windows 2003 Server R2 onto a ML 310 G4.
After hours of trying to get that Intel SATA-Raid running i luckily found your article. It´s a great hint using the Adaptec Drivers with Intels ICH7R Chipset.
Greetings from Germany,
S.Z.
Posted by Stefan Zwosta (FiLEWALKER.de) | June 30, 2008 8:43 PM
Posted on June 30, 2008 20:43
Stefan,
Firstly, Windows 2003 is supported on the ML310, you should not have any problems with the installation, just use the Smart Start CD.
Secondly, in May 2008, this server, actually the customer's server started having really weird problems. It will freeze 10~50 minutes after bootup. The time period is random. We days and nights trying to solve it, in the end we did a reinstall to clear it.
Looking back, I remembered that the controller was trying to verify mirror everytime we bootup.
If you encounter similar problems, you might want to stop the server at boot to let it complete verifying.
regards
AL
Posted by AL | July 15, 2008 12:53 PM
Posted on July 15, 2008 12:53
Hi Al,
well - i was not able to switch to SATA-Raid and then use the SmartStart-CD because it did not find the correct controller and claimed always there would be zero bytes of space left.
I tried using SmartStart-CD from v7.80, v7.91, and 8.0 - always had the same problem recognizing the raid mirror set with the correct free space.
At least your solution worked!
I don´t have any problems running the server in mirror mode. But thank you for the hint.
Greetings + Regards
S.Z.
Posted by Stefan Zwosta (FiLEWALKER.de) | July 15, 2008 11:21 PM
Posted on July 15, 2008 23:21
Al wrote:
>Firstly, Windows 2003 is supported on the ML310,
>you should not have any problems with the
>installation, just use the Smart Start CD.
Thats wrong if you try to install using the integrated Raid card as boot controller because SmartStart actually supports only SmartArray controllers (eg. HP E200, P400 etc.)
Posted by Emanuele Roserba | October 15, 2008 10:43 PM
Posted on October 15, 2008 22:43
Thank you for your info. I didn't know that.
Posted by AL | October 21, 2008 10:36 AM
Posted on October 21, 2008 10:36
"Using the Windows 2003 driver at HP website is able to recognize the RAID volume but on reboot to start the Windows based installer, it gave a blue screen."
I attempted an install of server 2003 R2 using the embedded SATA RAID config and got the exact same result. After hours of troubleshooting I found your post. I am attempting your solution currently. Wish me luck :)
Proliant ML310 G3 using adaptec embedded RAID
Posted by Jeff Burdine | August 12, 2010 6:55 AM
Posted on August 12, 2010 06:55
Worked like a dream!! Now if only I hadn't wasted all that time on HP's website looking for a solution. Thanks for taking the time to detail this solution.
Proliant ML310 G3 using adaptec embedded RAID
Posted by Jeff Burdine | August 12, 2010 7:05 AM
Posted on August 12, 2010 07:05