Dell r720 w/LSI SAS 9207-8i HBA boot issue

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

altmannj

New Member
May 7, 2019
6
0
1
I'm having an issue booting Hyper-V Server 2016 from an SSD that resides on the LSI SAS 9207-8i HBA. The card is flashed to the newest firmware (IT Mode) and I have flashed the latest BIOS to the card. After flashing the BIOS and enabling the boot driver in the Dell r720, I can see the card during post. The card is able to see all the drives attached from the backplane to the HBA.

When booting, pressing "CTRL + C" to manage the LSI card does not work, it simply goes past and says it will be available after initialization. Using the card in my desktop PC, I am able to get into the settings fine. I've read that some motherboards don't like the LSI BIOS, and the r720 may be one of them.

I am able to online the drives in the Windows setup and install the OS to an SSD that's on the LSI HBA. Upon rebooting (whether the Dell r720 is in BIOS or UEFI mode) I am unable to boot to the OS. Since I'm not able to configure the LSI HBA from BIOS, I'm not sure if there's an option to select the boot drive.

Has anyone had this card work on a Dell r270 (non XD)? Is there a workaround to get it to boot from a drive on the HBA?

Thank you,

Jordan
 

altmannj

New Member
May 7, 2019
6
0
1
I've got it figured out a workaround. During the initial post, pressing "CTRL + C" to enter the LSI BIOS will be skipped. What I had to do was enter "BIOS Boot Manager" through Dell's BIOS, once the GUI menu opened, I chose "Normal Boot" which scans again for hardware including the LSI card. I was them prompted (for a second time) to press "CTRL +C" and was able to access the cards BIOS and configure the boot drive.

I hope this helps someone!
 

Dareposte

New Member
Jul 7, 2023
2
0
1
Hey I know this is like 4 years old, but I just made an account to tell you it saved my bacon today. Thanks for posting.

I have an r720xd where I flashed the PERC h710 to IT mode, and then added an LSI card to control the back two drive bays and a few sata nvme’s I wanted to boot from. Couldn’t get the boot order fixed to use the nvme’s as boot drives, as the Ctrl-C did nothing, and wound up doing as you suggested and got it to work.

You could have easily just fixed it and moved on, so thanks for following up with the fix. I appreciate you!