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
