Error flashing the nvram intelligent provisioning

Error flashing the nvram intelligent provisioning

У одного из наших клиентов, которому мы оказываем услуги ИТ аутсорсинга , на сервере HPE Proliant Gen8 периодически стала сбоить дисковая подсистема, построенная на отказоустойчивой технологии raid5. Анализ ситуации показал, что причина сбоев кроется в жестких дисках. На протяжении четырёх лет они работали постоянно, с высокой нагрузкой (сервер выполнял роль базы данных 1с Предприятие). На дисках стали появляться сбойные секторы, из-за чего рейд-контроллер начал часто выполнять проверку целостности. Менять диски по одиночке мы не стали, было принято решение создать массив из новых дисков с полной переустановкой Windows Сервер (тем более, что за это время вышла его новая версия). Все операции для нас — весьма обыденные и сюрприза никто не ждал.

Сделали резервные копии всех ценных данных, которые также остались на старом массиве. Достали старые диски из сервера и установили новые. Далее предстояло создать новый рейд-массив. Для этого нужно было после включения сервера зайти в фирменную утилиту HPE Intelligent Provisioning .

Каково было наше удивление, когда при попытке запуска Intelligent Provisioning на мониторе был только чёрный экран.

Сначала мы предположили, что версия Intelligent Provisioning устарела и не хочет загружаться, т.к. в процессе эксплуатации сервера мы обновляли только важные драйверы и систему HPE Integrated Lights-Out v4 (iLO) из-за найденных в ней уязвимостей. Решили обновить всё. Скачали последнюю версию образа HPE Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP) Gen8 , которая доступна нам как партнерам HP, запустили, обновили всё, что нашлось нового. Но, к сожалению, там не было ничего про обновление HPE Intelligent Provisioning. После рестарта сервера она всё ещё не запускалась.

Погуглили и выяснили, что нам, вероятно, поможет другая утилита, под названием Intelligent Provisioning Recovery Media . По информации с сайта HP — она может восстановить и обновить Intelligent Provisioning на сервере.

Смонтировали образ через iLO и загрузили. В процессе запуска получили вот такое сообщение: BMC unresponsive unable to continue . Обновление HPE Intelligent Provisioning не загружается.

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Почитали инструкцию, там написано что образ через iLO лучше не монтировать, т.к. в процессе обновления он может отвалиться. В сервере нет DVD привода, а у нас чистых болванок. Проблема. Потратили время, добыли всё что надо. Загрузились с DVD и опять получили ошибку BMC unresponsive unable to continue. Проблема была не в образе.

В процессе гугления и множественных перезагрузок сервера заметили, что iLO как-то ненормально подтормаживает, но не обратили внимания. Далее, в процессе загрузки сервера, заметили неприметную надпись: iLO self test error , которая очень быстро исчезала. Решили, что с iLO что-то не так, заново перезалили последнюю прошивку, но надпись не исчезла. Снова погуглили, и обнаружили информацию о том, что из-за сбоя в NAND памяти iLO, журналы HPE Active Health System (AHS) и профили HPE OneView становятся недоступны, что приводит к ошибке самотестирования iLO self test error. Это и является причиной заторможенной работы, которую мы наблюдали ранее. Ну и конечно, Intelligent Provisioning не будет работать при нажатии клавиши F10. БИНГО!

В качестве решения предлагается отформатировать эту самую NAND память. Для этого создаём файл Format.xml такого содержания:

[pastacode lang=»markup» manual=»%3CRIBCL%20VERSION%3D%E2%80%9D2.0%E2%80%B3%3E%0A%3CLOGIN%20USER_LOGIN%3D%E2%80%9DAdministrator%E2%80%9D%20PASSWORD%3D%E2%80%9D%E2%80%9D%3E%0A%3CRIB_INFO%20MODE%3D%E2%80%9Dwrite%E2%80%9D%3E%0A%3CFORCE_FORMAT%20VALUE%3D%E2%80%9Dall%E2%80%9D%20%2F%3E%0A%3C%2FRIB_INFO%3E%0A%3C%2FLOGIN%3E%0A%3C%2FRIBCL%3E» message=»» highlight=»» provider=»manual»/]

и запускаем его через фирменную утилиту, конфигурирования iLO

hpqlocfg -s -l c:temphpqcfg.log -f c:tempFormat.xml -v -t user=Administrator,password=

Указывать необходимо те логины и пароли, которые предоставляют полный доступ к iLO.

После выполнения скрипта iLO перезагрузится и заново инициализирует NAND память.

Ждем 5 минут, запускаем Intelligent Provisioning, старая версия загрузилась нормально. Ну, гулять так гулять — убили кучу времени, можно и обновить и Intelligent Provisioning до новейшей версии.

Запускаем управление рейд-контроллером, делаем пятый рейд, устанавливаем Windows.

В завершение устанавливаем драйверы, обновления, SQL сервер, 1с предприятие, делаем настройки на максимальную производительность.

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Error flashing the nvram intelligent provisioning

This post describes how to start «Intelligent Provisioning» or the «HP Smart Storage Administrator (ACU / SSA)» on a Gen8 server with a broken NAND, so that you can change the boot disk order. It has been successfully tested on the HPE MicroServer Gen8 as well as on a ProLiant ML310e Gen8, using either a USB drive or a ВµSD / SD card with at least 1GB of capacity.

Changing the Boot Disk

HP Gen8 servers in AHCI mode will always try to boot from the first disk in the (non-)hot-swap drive bay, and completely ignore the other disks you have attached.

The absolutely non-obvious way to change the boot device, as outlined in a well-hidden comment on the HP forum, is:

• Change the SATA mode from «AHCI» to «RAID» in BIOS
  • Ignore the nasty red and orange warning about losing all your data
• Boot into HP «Smart» Storage Administrator
• Create a single logical disk of type RAID0
• Add the desired boot device (and only it!) to the RAID0
• Profit!

The disks in the drive bay will become invisible as boot devices / to your GRUB, but they will keep working as before under your operating system, and there seems to be no negative impact on the boot device either.

This is great advice, provided that you are actually able to boot into SSA (by pressing F5 at the right moment during your bootup process).

WARNING / Update: apparently, booting from an SSD on the ODD port (SATA port 5) is not supported by HPE, so it is a pure coincidence that it is possible to set up, and your server will eventually forget the RAID configuration of the ODD port, falling back to whatever boot device is in the first non-hot-plug bay. This has happened to me on the ML310e, but not on the MicroServer (as reported in the forum) yet.

The Error Message

However, for some time now, my HP MicroServer Gen8 has been showing one of those nasty NAND / Flash / SD-Card / whatever error messages:

• iLO Self-Test reports a problem with: Embedded Flash/SD-CARD. View details on Diagnostics page.
• Controller firmware revision 2.10.00 Partition Table Read Error: Could not partition embedded media device
• Embedded Flash/SD-CARD: Embedded media initialization failed due to media write-verify test failure.
• Embedded Flash/SD-CARD: Failed restart..

..or a variation thereof. I have ignored it because I thought it referred to the SD card and it didn’t impact the server in noticeable ways.

At least not until I wanted to make the shiny new SSD that I bought the default boot device for the server, which is when I realized that neither the F5 key to run HP’s «Smart» Storage Administrator tool, nor the F10 key for the «Intelligent» Provisioning tool (do you notice a theme on their naming?) had any effect on the boot process.

The «Official» Solution

The general advice from the Internet to «fix» this error is to repeat the following steps in random order, multiple times:

• Disconnect mains power for some minutes
• «Format Embedded Flash and reset iLO» from the iLO web interface
• «Reset iLO» from the iLO web interface
• Reset the CMOS settings from the F9 menu
• Reset the iLO settings via mainboard jumpers
• Downgrade iLO to 2.54
• Upgrade iLO to the latest version
• Send a custom XML via HPQLOCFG.exe

I’ve tried the various suggestions (except for the iLO downgrade, because the HTML5 console introduced in 2.70 is the only one not requiring arcane legacy browsers), but the error remained.

So I tried to install the provisioning recovery media nevertheless, but it failed with the anticipated «Error flashing the NVRAM»:

(it will not boot the ISO if you just dd it to an USB flash drive, but you can put it on a DVD or use the «Virtual Media» gimmick on a licensed iLO)

If none of the above «fixes» work, then your NAND chip is probably faulty indeed and thus the final advice given is:

• Contact HPE for a replacement motherboard

However, my MicroServer is out of warranty and I’m not keen on waiting for weeks or months for replacement and shelling out real money on top.

Booting directly into SSA / IP

But that fancy HPIP171.2019_0220.23.iso we downloaded to repair the NAND surely contains what we need, in some heavily obfuscated form?

Let’s mount it as a loopback device and find out!

The ip directory contains the largest payload of that ISO, and all three .img.gz files look like disk images, with exactly 256MB ( vid ), 512MB ( bigvid ) and 1024MB ( gaius ) extracted sizes.

Following the «bigger is better» slogan, let’s write the biggest one, gaius.img.gz to an USB flash drive and see what happens!

Then, on boot-up, select the «USB DriveKey» option:

And you will be greeted by a friendly black & white GRUB loader, offering you «Intelligent» Provisioning and «Smart» Storage Administrator, which you can promptly and successfully boot:

From here, you can create a single logical volume of type RAID0, add just your boot disk into it, restart and be happy!

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ML350e NVRam Error

Trying to upgrade Intelligent Provisioning to version 2.50 on a HP Proliant ML350e in order to install Windows 2012 R2.

However, during update it says «Error Flashing NVRam»

Just wondered if anyone had encountered this.

Popular Topics in HPE Hardware

Googling it, people have and whilst I have not bothered reading and checking how relevant this is, one guy referred to: https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=mmr_kc-0108654 Opens a new window

Googling it, people have and whilst I have not bothered reading and checking how relevant this is, one guy referred to: https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=mmr_kc-0108654 Opens a new window

Thanks, but this isn’t relevant to my question 🙁

Are you still having issues with this one?

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I have not had this issue myself, but looking around it might have to do with the needing to do a NAND format, not sure.

Several days ago I ended up upgrading the Intelligent Provisioning to version 16.4 and it worked after that, I was able to install OS.

Thanks all for your responses.

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HP Intelligent Provisioning Firmware Update Failed

So, I finally got to set up my first Gen8 server. It is a ProLiant DL360e Gen8. Two actually. At first, I was very happy with all the new advancements. No more searching for a SmartStart CD you say! Brilliant! No more confusion on SmartStart version compatibility? Wicked! (Yes, there is a VERY fine line of SmartStart CD’s that will support both a ProLiant DL360 G4p and putting Server 2008 R2 on it – I like to live dangerously!). So, as many of you already know Intelligent Provisioning replaced SmartStart CDs. The cool part is, you just boot right into it. Its an option – F10 at POST. Neat huh? And it looks so sharp too. (Check the image below)

They have this neat feature called Firmware Update that will directly connect to HP.com (or a local update server) and get all your firmware updates for you. Very neat. Especially useful if we are using an OS like VMware ESXi. So I configured the network settings on both my servers and got the error in the screenshot below.

I checked my settings a dozen times on both servers, tried different IPs, different NIC ports on the server and sadly no luck. It just wouldn’t connect. I called HP and the first tech has me update from v1.30 to v1.40.88. Sadly this did not help. I called back (different tech this time) and they told me this is a known issue with certain servers running certain system firmware versions and that they are working on it.

Insert sad face. 🙁

This seems like a really cool feature. I just wish I could test it. Until then, I will be going back to downloading the bootable Service Pack for ProLiant DVD.

About Gareth Gudger

Gareth is an Microsoft MVP specializing in Exchange and Office 365. Gareth also contributes to the Office 365 for IT Pros book, which is updated monthly with new content. Find Gareth on LinkedIn, Twitter, or, Facebook.

Reader Interactions

supertekboy says

I found an thread on the HP communities later that said if you switch from a static IP to DHCP in Intelligent Provisioning it will work. Although I have yet to try it. Others then said, this was fixed in the version I updated too. So this could be the issue or just an older problem that caused the same error that was later fixed.

Buddy says

Just ran into the same issue myself, except not calling HP. Total bummer, dude. Wasted half my day.

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