Firmware Upgrade

iLO

  • Download iLO 4 2.82, extract (we need ilo4_282.bin)
  • Login to iLO
  • Administration -> Firmware -> Choose File ilo4_282.bin -> Upload -> Wait. It will complete and reboot

BIOS

  • Download Online ROM Flash, extract (we need CPQJ0613.684)
  • Login to iLO
  • Administration -> Firmware -> Choose File CPQJ0613.684 -> Upload -> Wait. It will complete and reboot

Intelligent Provisioning

  • Download ISO 1.74
  • Use iLO virtual drive to mount the image
  • Reboot and it will boot from CD-ROM
  • Automatic installation

Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP)

  • Download 2017.04.0 SPP ISO
  • Use iLO virtual drive to mount the image
  • Reboot and it will boot from CD-ROM
  • Choose “Interactive Fireware Update” and update the needed firmware (e.g. Broadcom NX1 Online Firmware). No need to update iLO and BIOS using SPP

Install Proxmox to SSD on SATA5

Very simple:

  • Remove all disk in the front bay
  • Enable SATA AHCI support in BIOS
  • Use iLO virtual drive to mount the Proxmox image
  • Follow the GUI instruction to install Proxmox onto SSD

Boot from USB for Proxmox

Use parted to create GRUB partition on the USB drive

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GNU Parted 3.4 
Using /dev/sda 
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands. 

(parted) unit s 
(parted) mklabel gpt 
(parted) disk_set pmbr_boot on 

(parted) print free 
Model: (file) 
Disk /dev/sda: 2097152s 
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B 
Partition Table: gpt 
Disk Flags: pmbr_boot 

Number Start End      Size     File system Name Flags 
       34s   2097118s 2097085s Free Space 
       
(parted) mkpart linux 2048s 2097118s 
(parted) set 1 lvm on 
(parted) mkpart grub 34s 2047s 
Warning: The resulting partition is not properly aligned for best performance: 34s % 2048s != 0s Ignore/Cancel? ignore 
(parted) set 2 bios_grub on

Use proxmox-boot-tool to format and initialize EFI system partition

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proxmox-boot-tool format /dev/sda1
proxmox-boot-tool init /dev/sda1

RAIDZ1

Create ZFS pool with RAIDZ1

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zpool create nas /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd

Not using SSD as cache since L2ARC (Read Cache) requires a lot of RAM and my 16GB RAM does not seem to be enough to benefit from it. Also, I don’t think my NAS will involve many synchronous writes so ZIL (Write Cache/SLOG) is not necessary.