When I bought a PowerEdge R630 I did not actually need RAID, but an S140 came with it by default, so I figured I might as well build the server in a RAID configuration — and got stuck.
The server build plan
Since there are 4 HDDs, I considered installing Debian Linux or VMware ESXi on RAID5
Boot failure from the rear USB port
There is no CD/DVD drive included and no PXE boot environment either, so I created a boot disk on USB, plugged it into a rear USB port and powered the machine on, at which point it froze at “Initilize Firmware Interfaces” and did not go any further.
I pulled the USB boot disk out for a moment and fiddled with the BIOS, but that did not solve it; in the end I plugged it into a front USB port and it booted without any trouble
RAID not detected during the Linux install
When I went ahead with installing Debian Linux booted from the USB, at the partitioning step RAID was not recognized and the 4 HDDs were recognized individually (RAID cannot be detected)
Changing the RAID settings
I stopped the Linux install for the moment and tried changing the PERC S140 settings.
At the time it was set up, the 4 HDDs were built into a RAID, and as shown in the figure the RAID Type was Windows RAID. There was information saying that when you use Linux it is better to change this RAID Type to “Linux RAID”, so I tried changing it.
However, it seems that with Linux RAID you can only use RAID1.
Nevertheless, the result was that it was still not recognized at the partitioning step of the Linux install. Incidentally CentOS8 did not recognize it either
Software RAID not supported?
With RAID not being recognized, I went ahead with the Linux install treating them as individual HDDs, and this time I ran into a problem where grub could not be installed
After looking into various things, it turns out that the S140’s software RAID affects performance and that VMware ESXi is not supported PowerPoint プレゼンテーション (in Japanese)
It may be only my environment, but it seems that the S140’s software RAID (VirtualDisk) and Linux do not get along well.
The final Linux build
In the end, since Linux could not be installed with either Linux RAID or RAID1, I removed the S140’s RAID configuration (Non RAID) and used the 4 HDDs individually, which let grub install without trouble and completed the server build.
If you really want to build a RAID, it may be better to build it with mdadm on Linux (Debian, CentOD)
When you buy a PowerEdge, it may be safer to pick the hardware RAID H730P