Hello all, having some painful issues today trying to install routerOs on a dell poweredge 1950 box.
Firstly I made sure I spec’d the server with no raid controller etc, so there are just 2 sata drives connected to an SAS which does allow raid 0 or 1 but has been completly disabled. Drives should be directly accessible, I just had the idea to get the tech on-site to throw an ubuntu cd in and see what they display as.
But firstly:
Tried to install to hard drives from 3.20 iso, kept giving hard drive not found errors.
Change the configs around to ensure the drive was indeed bootable, that the system could see it and that it wasn’t in a raid setup of any sort.
Secondly:
Gave up on that and tried booting from a netinstalled 1gb usb key, system boots of the usb, shows SYSLINUX loading and gets to the “ready” line, then stops responding. Have tried 2 Usb keys using both version 3.20 and 3.13 … all get to the same point and stop.
Thirdly:
Gave up on that and figured I might try pxe-booting after I read a thread here (http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/routeros-3-x-netinstall-to-hard-drive-no-hard-disk-found/22083/1) where a fellow said he was only able to install on his drives via a pxe install. In this case when I try to do the pxe install the system install it connects properly and begins loading the files then gives FATAL ERROR: no network card found
I’m about to start pulling my hair out, I’m currently placing the blame squarely on the fact that its Friday 13th… thou if anyone has any suggestions feel free to post them here
Bah, my hard drive problem is that dell (due to a very late delivery) upgraded us to the 1950 with a SAS controller rather than a SATA one
That still doesn’t explain why the usb doesn’t boot thou.
Its getting harder and harder to find a decent server that supports
4 port gigabit card
embedded sata controller
remote access card
Which is really what we need for any remote install.
What I don’t understand is why mikrotik can’t just release a SCSI/RAID/SAS support package as an additional option.. just don’t included it in the routerboard software …
That way we could easily either:
a) run ESXi and mikrotik as a virtual machine
b) run Mikrotik on any x86 server regardless of disks.
The biggest problem I have now is that most of the servers (rackmount) that can support a remote access card and a 4port gigabit card need 2 PCIe slots.. and most servers that have 2 PCIe slots are either the higher end of the 1RU ranges or 2RU server, which then end up having embedded SAS controllers instead of SATA.
I know there are other solutions available such as the PowerRouter systems, but why is mikrotik not looking into this sort of thing themselves? Dennis has obviously put a lot of time and effort into building a high-end device for RouterOS, unfortunatly for us, we can’t use these as we can’t get any next business day replacements / hardware support (this is not a fault of the power router guys but just due to the fact we’re all in different countries).
omega-00: same problem here, i think a really powerful system is not in the focus of mt. everybody who is in the need of something better than rb1000 or a c2d (but of course with just one core, as multi-cpu is not that stable to use it as a core-router ) should use another software for that, thats what i think they think
we use the small j-series from juniper for such tasks (traffic larger than 300mb/s, remote access out-of-band, multi-gbit-ports), its a cheapo and has junos on it and the support contracts are a dream and up to 4h-replacement for a good price. sometimes mt simply can’t compete with the “big” guys, as sad as this is. and they even say this all the time, especially when asked for their opinion to cisco-products compared to mt-products. so take their word and act accordingly and get another system for some tasks.
if you are absolutely desperate to get a mt running on a decent server, have a look at the sun x2100 m2, maybe that is sth for you. we use it with linux for various tasks and it has a sata-controller and can be upgraded with a bmc, but has ipmi on board and can supply a remote console by that, maybe that is enough for you.
the larger suns like the x4100 all have sas-controller, so only look at the x2100. single cpu opteron with 2ghz, 4 memory banks for up to 16gb (or 32gb? i don’t remember) abd two sata-hdd-bays non-hotplug. but all server hardware and one of the best service-networks for rmas and replacements in the world for free with every sun-server, even those small ones.
there are these new Ogmaconnect devices that are really powerful, and they are 100% compatible with RouterOS (so they say). look at: http://www.tiktube.com/?video=201
I have already been investigating these, biggest thing is to find a local supplier who’s interested in bringing them in whom I can deal with.
As I see it, the best mikrotik hardware I could hope for would have:
2ghz or higher CPU
2gb ram - optionally 4gb
2 x SATA drive bays
2 x Internally mounted USB ports (3g modem + optional mikrotik USB drive)
2 x externally mounted USB ports (for UPS connection and/or 3g modem and/or USB drive)
2 - 4 onboard gb ethernet ports
2 x PCI-E slots for:
1 x 4 port gb ethernet card or other interface card
1 x Remote access card
The remote access card is the one I find most useful on current servers as if for any reason I break a config or even upgrade a device improperly and lose access to it, I have a backup method of regaining access to my machine and getting it back online with no hands on support.
The Dell R200 would be a perfect candidate for this but for the fact it won’t support both a 4 port gb eth card AND a remote access card.
Hi Omega -00
Sorry to hear about your installation issues with the PE 1950 Server … I have good experience in operating these great servers, … however the SAS / SATA Controller is custom and MT ROS does not in Seeing custom hardware such as the SAS5i / SAS6ir / PERC 5/6,
I do know how you feel… the good news is that it looks like you have a Dell RAC… which means I can take a look at your bios settings… perhaps you could set me up with a temp account on the DRAC so that I can see what settings you have on your system, you can send me an email if you want tom.smyth a t w i r e le s s connect . e u and we can discuss further,
just out of interest is it a PE1950 version III or is it an original PE 1950 server … (any server purchased before Nov 2007 is more or less a PE 1950 I / II) and has slightly different hardware configurations
I’m getting the exact same error trying to boot from USB on a Dell PE 860, the crazy thing is that I have a old 512mb pen drive that it will boot from just fine, but the brand new Kingston 2gb (model DT100/2GB) pen drive (that I just took the time to mount inside the case with a 12" USB extension cable, and re-install in the rack) won’t boot… no changes to the BIOS at all and it boots from one, hangs on the other… I suspect it has to do with the partition or partition size on the pen drive, but not quite sure how to go about fixing it…
nope, tried everything I could think of… I did format them with FAT and FAT32, even just tried a different 2gb drive I just picked up from the store, this one PNY…
I’ve got one 512mb sandisk that works fine, and can’t get anything else to work (trying to get 4 routers running at the moment)
I suspect the issue revolves around the partition table being locked by the device or something like that.
I was finally able to install by booting off the ISO image burned to a CD-Rom drive, couldn’t install to the USB directly or boot from netinstall, both locked up at boot time.
