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Dell R720xd and LSI9211-8i Booting issue

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Hockyplr

New Member
Joined
Jul 9, 2018
Lets start with the basics. Dell R720xd, 2 Xenon 2620 Chips, 64GB Ram, Has Backplane as well as additional Rear backplane which adds the additional 2 2.5 Slots. The front Backplane, not that it should matter is set up to receive 12 3.5" Drives.



I'll answer the first question I get asked the most, why get away from Hardware RAID? For me, I want the ability to plug any size drive in and have it be recognized and the space used.



This system did have a H700 Raid card, which I removed, as I want to basically use this for my media server and run Software raid with JBOD.

I purchased a LSI 9211-8i on recommendation and installed it. It's running the current p20 firmware. I turned off the Boot option within the LSI configuration (CTRL+C).



I plug a 400gb SSD into the Rear backplane and use a Bootable USB to install Windows Server 2016 to the 400GB SSD.



For whatever reason I cannot get the System to boot from the 400gb Drive into Windows Server. I should mention, at this time no other drives are attached. I want to get a system running before adding more drives then building the pool.



I have tried this in both BIOS Boot mode and UEFI Boot Mode.



I am fairly new to this, so I apologize if I am going about this all wrong. I am open to any and all suggestions. Any help, guides, anything is much appreciated. I have been at this on and off for 2 weekends. I'd like to get this set up and running so I can move forward.



Things I have heard, LSI running 20... is not great with SSD, flash it to V19. Not sure if this is worth trying or not.



I have also tried a 4 Port Sata pcie card based on Marvell. Could not get that to work either even with the LSI card out. Some say the Marvell is not very compatible with Dell, again I do not know if this is true or not. Below are some screen shots.








https://i.imgur.com/8nv7yju.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/tpqLGMC.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/YdhLLl6.jpg



Thank you for your time.
 
Have you contacted Dell support to validate that your hardware configuration is supported by the UEFI BIOS? It seems like the BIOS recognizes the drive and acknowledges the order, however something isn't working on the handshake between the OS and BIOS at POST
 
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