Using 4k Native drives as OS (Bootable)

Using 4k Native drives as OS (Bootable)

Installation

Create a virtual drive

  • Create a virtual drive in the RAID controller

  • Be sure to disable drive emulation

 

The reason we set emulation to disable, was that there was a bug in the firmware where Virtual Disks built from 4kn SED SSD  drives, that were set to emulate 512 drives would fail during initialization, and require low level format of physical disks to recover.
Emulation "Force" and "Default" will not do anything on 512 drives, but will set 512 emulation on drives with other block sizes.
 

 

Configure the BIOS

Installation was done remotely via IPMI

  • Attach the ISO over the remote IPMI connection.
  • Go to the boot section in the BIOS and select 'UEFI Boot Drive BBS Priorities'

  • Select the IPMI virtual CD

  • Boot from the UEFI Virtual CD

 

OS installation

  • Install the OS
  • Remove the virtual CD from the IPMI

 

Wrap-up

  • Load the BIOS
  • Set the installation target as the 1st Device in the 'UEFI Boot Drive BBS Priorities'
  • Make sure that this is set on the overall boot priorities as well

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