One of the things we needed to do when deploying a server is that we need to setup the partitions correctly before we deploy it. Of course, we could always load up the smart start utility and perform the RAID configuration. But when you are doing remote deployment, that is, someone in London racked and powered up the server and you deploy it, it not always fun to load the ISO CD image, mostly because of the synchronization of the stupid mouse cursor over the WAN in some locations. And even in locations where the WAN is good, getting the cursor to go where you want to with the smart start it no fun. The other point is also it takes time for Smart Start to run.
So what we did was to include the command line equivalent of the array configuration called hpacucli.exe (you can download this from HP) into our deployment image. We can then launch this from the command prompt after its booted up in WinPE.
In our configuration our standard is always RAID 1 with 2 x HDD, 50% C:, the rest D: and we only need to configure one partition (the first partition).
Type the command “hpacucli ctrl all show config”, and take note of the size, disk description and slot number. You should see a result like this.
Smart Array P400 in Slot 1 (sn: xxxxxxxx)
array A (SAS, Unused Space: 0 MB)
logicaldrive 1 (36.0 GB, RAID 1+0, OK)
logicaldrive 2 (32.3 GB, RAID 1+0, OK)physicaldrive 2I:1:1 (port 2I:box 1:bay 1, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
physicaldrive 2I:1:2 (port 2I:box 1:bay 2, SAS, 72 GB, OK)
The above results actually shows that I have already configured RAID partitions (okay this is reuse kit), so I want to repartition it.
So I issue the following commands to destroy any existing partitions and redo with only 1 partition. Note the size=36000 will not give me exact 36 GB, since 36 GB is not really 36000 kbytes. If you want to find out the exact number, I suggest you do a display on an existing server of the same configuration to find the size to put.
hpacucli controller slot=1 logicaldrive all delete forced
hpacucli ctrl slot=1 create type=LD drives=2I:1:1,2I:1:2 raid=1 size=36000
hpacucli ctrl slot=1 create type=LD drives=2I:1:1,2I:1:2 raid=1 size=Max
hpacucli rescan
hpacucli ctrl all show config
Hope this helps some of you.
