Acessing HP Disk Array from Linux

Question

I have some old HP Proliant GL5 with HP P400i array controllers that I want to put to some use.

In a small test I have booted with Archlinux, and it was able to list the array card and network interfaces. So far so good.

In system setup (pressing f9) I have configured a array disk (RAID 1+0), successfully.

Unfortunately I cannot see the disks in lsscsi or fdisk -l.

How can I get access to the logical disk?

Is it possible to directly access the disks without the disk array and use linux to handle the RAID itself?

By the way, I'm not bound to archlinux, that was just one test. I can use other linux distributions as Debian or Ubuntu.

Best regards,

Answer 1

No it is not possible to expose the disks to Linux for software RAID.

The tool you need for configuring the Smart Array Controller is called hpacucli or hpssacli.

Do what you can to find a binary and use that.

Answer 2

Try alien to rebuild this RPM from here:

https://downloads.linux.hpe.com/SDR/repo/mcp/centos/6/x86_64/9.50/

Something like this:

# alien hpacucli-9.40-12.0.x86_64.rpm
generated hpacucli-9.40-12.0.x86_64.deb
# dpkg -i hpacucli-9.40-12.0.x86_64.deb
... <fix any dependency issues>
# hpacucli
HP Array Configuration Utility CLI 9.40.12.0
Detecting Controllers...Done.
Type "help" for a list of supported commands.
Type "exit" to close the console.

=> ctrl all show config

Smart Array P410i in Slot 0 (Embedded)    (sn: xxx)

   array A (SAS, Unused Space: 0  MB)


      logicaldrive 1 (5.5 TB, RAID 5, Interim Recovery Mode)

      physicaldrive 1I:1:1 (port 1I:box 1:bay 1, SAS, 1 TB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:2 (port 1I:box 1:bay 2, SAS, 1 TB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:3 (port 1I:box 1:bay 3, SAS, 1 TB, OK)
      physicaldrive 1I:1:4 (port 1I:box 1:bay 4, SAS, 1 TB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:5 (port 2I:box 1:bay 5, SAS, 1 TB, Failed)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:6 (port 2I:box 1:bay 6, SAS, 1 TB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:7 (port 2I:box 1:bay 7, SAS, 1 TB, OK)
      physicaldrive 2I:1:8 (port 2I:box 1:bay 8, SAS, 1 TB, Failed, spare)

   SEP (Vendor ID PMCSIERA, Model  SRC 8x6G) 250 (WWID: xxx)

For RHEL8/Oracle 8/Rocky 8/Alma 8, the RPM installs cleanly without issue. For Ubuntu/Debian, you'll need to bring it in with alien (or rip out the RPM's CPIO in some other way, like with rpm2cpio).