The tutorial applies for general server configuration. Most of the settings used are the way they are just as a result of long years of experience for specific needs. Onlinehowto.net comes to use these setting for our own needs and that in noway means that you have to do it like us ;)


This document focus on the following steps:

1.BIOS configuration
2.RAID configuration

I.BIOS configuration.

Restart HP DL server and wait for prompt for pressing F2 key. Press F2 key to enter in the BIOS settings. BIOS Main menu.

Enter in Server Availability submenu. Set the following options:

Automatic Power-On - Enabled (After power outage servers should be started automatically)
Wake-On Lan - disabled
Power-On delay - No Delay depending on the installation(can be used to prevent power system overload)

After the configuration is done press F10 key to exit from the BIOS:

II.RAID configuration.

The RAID setup used for all onlinehowto.net installations is 1+0 also known as RAID 10.Raid 1+0 is a combination between Raid 0 (striping) and Raid 1 (mirroring) :


RAID 0 (striped disks) distributes data across several disks in a way that gives improved speed and full capacity, but all data on all disks will be lost if any one disk fails.


RAID 1 (mirrored disks) could be described as a backup solution, using two (possibly more) disks that each store the same data so that data is not lost as long as one disk survives. Total capacity of the array is just the capacity of a single disk. The failure of one drive, in the event of a hardware or software malfunction, does not increase the chance of a failure nor decrease the reliability of the remaining drives.

To enter in RAID configuration menu reboot the server and wait for the prompt that will ask you to enter F8 to enter in P400 Raid configuration utility.

Note:
For this tutorial we used a brand new system so we did not have any existing Logical Drives. Depending on you situation you may need to delete any previously configured drives. Do this by your own judgement. In our case we proceed this way.

To create the new logical drive go to Create Logical Drive menu. Select all drives from Available Physical Drives section Press Tab to go to the Raid configuration section , select RAID 1+0 option and press Enter to create the Logical Drive.

Press F8 to save the configuration.