Alberto Ortega’s Blog

Begin with the End

Well, I have this System X with VT capable processors so Installing Hyper-V should be pretty straightforward, I deployed tons of Hyper-Vs and never run into major problems more than well known remote management issues. This time I had to work a little harder, lets introduce the system

• IBM System x3650 7979
• Intel Xeon 5130 2.0 Ghz (2 Processors) –> (Intel VT Enabled, link)
• IBM ServeRAID 8k-l Controller

SOLUTION: To have Hyper-V working I had to

1. Updated ServeRAID 8k-l Controller firmware to v5.2-0 Build 15429 (Not strictly necessary but I needed to manage 1TB SATA drives).
2. Updated IBM BIOS to v1.16 (Because mine was not updated)
3. BIOS: Guarantee “Intel VT” was enabled.
4. BIOD: Guarantee “Execute Disable Bit” was enabled.

Until I did not executed Step 4, I got this discouraging error “The virtual machine could not be started because the hypervisor is not running.”, this is, I was able to deploy Hyper-V but for some dark reason the Hypervisor was not running

I hope this will save someone a couple of hours at least!

Thanks,

Update x3650 7979 ServeRAID 8k-l Controller firmware to v5.2-0 Build 15429

We have updated the IBM ServeRAID 8k and 8k-l BIOS and Firmware Update to the version v5.2.0-15429 (Build 15429) on our x3650 system. We failed to use the IBM Xpress Updater as it did not found any critical update applicable to the system.

This update is important to work with 1TB SATA drives. Check the firmware change log here: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/systems/support/system_x/ibm_fw_aacraid_8k-8kl-5.2.0-15429_windows_32-64.chg

Procedure

1. The procedure was not so straightforward, first the firmware update went good (running executable directly from Win2k8 R2) but showed a kernel panic on next boot, when the update was supposed to be applied.
2. Then I prepared a set of diskettes (4 in total) to found that I was not able to update the firmware using the diskettes (“PC DOS System message” appeared and machine went unresponsive).
3. Finally I found the the problem was the installed 1TB SATA drives. If you remove the disk on boot the controller kernel boots OK and the RAIDs are found. The, with the OS running you are able to insert the disk and access the 1TB drive.
   1. Copy the .exe to the x3650 system
   2. Run the Setup.

Note: As I mentioned before I had to copy the firmware to a set of diskettes, this procedure was not possible on a windows system. Tried Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008, I guess the bits on the IBM site are corrupted (I downloaded them twice) and the windows distribution is not able to create a diskette to update the firmware. Although I was able to create the set of diskettes using a Linux OS.

Updated x3650 BIOS to v1.16

I began downloading the Windows distribution from the IBM support site, I downloaded the IBM Flash BIOS Update v1.16 for Microsoft Windows - IBM System x3650, x3650 NAS, then

1. (Failed) I re-programmed the BIOS running the executable directly from my Windows box, the update occurred successfully but when I rebooted the system the BIOS was not upgraded at all. It happened that I was running on a backup copy of the BIOS “Booted from backup POST/BIOS image” with a BIOS Version v1.07, this was surely an old inherited problem from the last administrator using the box, so I switched to a floppy based BIOS flash.
2. (Success) I created a floppy using the Windows Executable (single floppy) and the BIOS re-programming worked like a charm.

BIOS Configuration

Intel VT was enabled in my BIOS, that seemed to be enough to me, however I also needed the Intel XD Execute Disable Bit enabled too, this is for security purposes.

This thread helped me a lot as it was exactly my problem. That’s enough for today!