I have been working on a project to change from a six node Nutanix VMware cluster to a Hyper-V one, simple I thought. Here was my intended method:
- Remove three nodes
- Reimage to Hyper-V using the Phoenix package and the Foundations VM
- Create a new cluster.
- V2V all the VMs using SCVMM
- Destroy the old cluster
- Reimage those nodes and add to the new cluster
Everything was going well until my NX-3050 nodes kept on failing to image using the Foundations tool. I decided to use the manual process for imaging nodes as outlined in the Foundations release guide but still no joy, the configuration script would not complete. After many hours or head scratching, checking and dissecting the configuration script, I found the answer. I was not getting any of the SSD and SATA drives attached to my CVM so it never booted correctly for the script to continue and finish. I ran DISKPART in Windows and sure enough the only disk showing in the LIST DISK command was the SATADOM. Queue a quick search on the Super micro site (after all the Nutanix nodes are just rebadged kit) for the SAS2 2108 card that is in the node. They have some Windows 2012 R2 drivers unfortunately they are not signed but you can’t have everything. So back to that manual process again, follow my article here for the manual re-image process but after installing Windows 2012 R2 do the following.
- Download the drivers and create an ISO of them.
- Attach the ISO using the IPMI to the machine.
- Run the following commands
c:cd \mkdir SAS Driverscopy e:\*.* c:\SASDrivers /qpnputil.exe -i -a C:\SASDrivers\*.inf You will get an unsigned driver prompt, accept it. Now when you check in DISKPART using the LIST DISK command you will see all the disks You can now carry on with the remaining steps.
