We had a number of new HP SL series servers arrive in work, and they didn’t have the normal P4XXi controller for the _OS_ drives (since they blades only have two drives in the front). They instead had a “Dynamic Smart Array B120i RAID controller” which sounds nice, but in the simplest form…its software RAID. The rear section has the P4XXi array controller however.

Dynamic Smart Array B120i RAID in Slot 0 (Embedded)
Smart Array P420i in Slot 1

So…to save a number of people trouble in configuring this under PXE, you would need to do the following. This is similar to what was found in this link, however unless you want to do be doing it one by one with a CD – then you would boot from PXE.

First, you need to download the hpvsa driver from the following link. You could have a few different versions depending on your OS, but be sure to get the latest one.

Secondly, extract the gz and add it to the server path. Also, add the line to end of your existing stub that looks something like this:

blacklist=ahci dd=http://location/of/server/hpvsa.rhel6u4.x86_64.img

Notice we changed the ending of the file to .img vs .dd. This was done based on the feedback we received from HP and also we haven’t tested it with .dd since it just worked with the .img ending. I will try it .dd when I have a change and update this blog entry.

Please be sure the permissions (644) are setup correctly on the file or else it will not be read properly.

Once you boot up, depending on your KS file, you would not be prompted, but it will install and configure the hpvsa driver for the OS:

#lsmod
Module Size Used by
hpvsa 2548728 3