Jason, The point of my email was to give people a heads up.
The Lenovo BIOS / raid implementation is non standard and a lot of this was not in their documentation. Even the Level 2 tech was not aware of it and agreed that it was an issue. To be clear if you want to use this server you have to use their software raid and you must have an UEFI OS period. And they do not support all OS's most notably debian or ubuntu, which a lot of people on the list use. Your comment about most buy their drives in trays already is fine if your a one vendor shop. I hate being forced into a single supplier/source situation, period. Mike On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 9:49 PM, Jason Rose <[email protected]> wrote: > I'd just stick to the onboard and back up what is needed. Have your core > system ready to deploy in an image if need be with config files backed up > if you dont want a second hot box running. Onbaord raid in a 2 or 2 U box > isn't that uncommon... > > For a raid card, you will need to order through a Lenovo house and they > can specify which card to include in the build. The drive trays is also > normal - you dont often get IT managers using old drives lying around, or > even buying their own. When you run professional drives you want > reliability / service and arent putting your own drives in trays. Again > they can be ordered with the servers, or some do include drives. > > Just bad luck for your particular application I guess, but I typically > stick to Lenovo (well I'm a dealer) because if there is an issue their tech > is on site with a replacement anything ASAP (depending on service included > / purchased) or within 24 hours for regular service. > > J > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* Mike - QTI <[email protected]> > *To:* "[email protected]" <[email protected]> > *Sent:* Wednesday, May 15, 2013 11:48:47 AM > *Subject:* [on-asterisk] Lenovo servers not such a great deal > > Hi Everyone, > > I just wanted to give everyone a heads up, and an overview of what I've > been going through with Lenovo. > > To start off the saga, I saw what appeared to be a great deal on some new > 1U Xeon ThinkServers from Lenovo ( Model RD330 ). I've been planning on > doing a hardware update and these looked like a great fit. So I purchased 2 > of them to do some testing with. At $1000, they came with no drives, which > I thought at first was fine since I had drives. You would assume the drive > bays would have included drive trays, but no they did not, they had dummy > tray faces. > > In North America you can not buy just the trays, they only come with drives > from Lenovo, which start at about 260 for SATA and 400 for SAS a piece. > Well I sourced trays on Amazon from Asia and bought them for $40 a piece. > > So now I have the trays! I wanted to use these servers as KVM hosts only, > so wanted to run just mirrored drives using linux md. Turns out the Lenovo > RD330 as onboard LSI MegaRaid, I thought no big deal , will disable since > it's not a card and portable and use linux mdraid. That way if I have a > hardware failure, I can pull the drives and stick into any hardware. > > I was using centOS 6.4 64bit minimal, installation went fine, but after > installation system would not boot, UEFI could not find the installation. > So go into bios to turn off UEFI and use legacy I thought. Well there is no > option for this, Lenovo has removed it from their bios. > > So call tech support, and they have no idea, so get to Level 2 support. > They say can't be so. So they have me do it again, same thing. Then then > have me download an ISO to install a new bios, which I do, but same result. > > L2 tech says works for him just fine! > > Of course tech keeps saying I must have something wrong , so reset the bios > to defaults and do everything again. Same result, OS installs, but UEFI can > not find on reboot after install. So thinking something wrong with centOS > EUFI installation and Lenovo says they only support 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, so I > install 6.2. Same result. SO I think maybe is anaconda installer, so I > install Ubuntu, same damn thing. > > So asked the tech, you are not using the LSI raid , correct? Since I > specifically asked him this at the start and explained my reasoning for it. > And then he says no, he was using the LSI controller. DUH! So I asked him > to try it without, to no surprise he could not get it to work. > > This has taken 2 weeks of back and forth. And today I get an email, that > there is no way to use the server without using the on board Raid > controller. > > So, I asked what the hell is the logic with that! I've never seen a > motherboard that has an on board raid controller that can not be bypassed > or turned off if not desired. They're rational is to lock you in to their > hardware platform and have a hot spare server on the shelf if there is a > server failure. > > So a great deal is not such a great deal. It's sad, since besides this they > are really nice boxes, and I think I would have ended up with about 10 of > them. Instead they are going to take them back, but I'm now out about 50 > very frustrating hours over the last 3-4 weeks. > > Just wanted to share , and give you all the heads up if you were > considering the server. > > Mike > > -- > Mike Ashton > CTO > Quality Track International > > Phone: +1 647.724.3500 x251 > Cell: +1 416.527.4995 > > > -- Mike Ashton CTO Quality Track International Phone: +1 647.724.3500 x251 Cell: +1 416.527.4995
