HPE Proliant dl80p gen8 problems installing Proxmox beyond 4.4

mkaicher

Member
May 23, 2020
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Hello all,

I am an enthusiast and newbie when it comes to Proxmox and really virtualization in general. I recently bought an HPE Proliant dl380p gen8 with dual Xeon E5-2660 processors, 128 GB ram, P420i RAID controller (which I've set to HBA mode), 4x 4TB HDDs, and a 128 GB SSD. After updating drivers, firmware, BIOS, and enabling all virtualization features, I found that I could not even boot the latest Proxmox image. I then tried Proxmox 5.4 and got the same result. After a little trial and error, I found I could boot and install Proxmox after changing the 'MPS (multi-processing specification) Table Mode' to 'Disabled' rather than 'Full Table APIC'. Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, Proxmox recognized only one CPU and one core. I also tried installing Proxmox on top of a standard Debian image which still only recognized one CPU and one core.

After another long stretch of trial and error, I successfully installed Proxmox 4.4 on top of Debian 8 (w/ Full Table APIC enabled in BIOS) which recognized both processors and all 32 cores (w/ hyper-threading). Strangely, the standalone Proxmox 4.4 image would not boot. Honestly, sticking with Proxmox 4.4 is more than adequate for my needs, however, this problem is still bugging me, especially after reading about others who are successfully running more recent Proxmox releases on the same hardware.

Any feedback would be gratefully appreciated! I suspect this has more to do with Debian itself rather than Proxmox and is probably something painfully obvious. If so, I apologize! I just recently began my journey into the server, VM, home-lab world and am fascinated by the power and flexibility of Proxmox!

Best,

mkaicher
 
Hello all,

I am an enthusiast and newbie when it comes to Proxmox and really virtualization in general. I recently bought an HPE Proliant dl380p gen8 with dual Xeon E5-2660 processors, 128 GB ram, P420i RAID controller (which I've set to HBA mode), 4x 4TB HDDs, and a 128 GB SSD. After updating drivers, firmware, BIOS, and enabling all virtualization features, I found that I could not even boot the latest Proxmox image. I then tried Proxmox 5.4 and got the same result. After a little trial and error, I found I could boot and install Proxmox after changing the 'MPS (multi-processing specification) Table Mode' to 'Disabled' rather than 'Full Table APIC'. Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, Proxmox recognized only one CPU and one core. I also tried installing Proxmox on top of a standard Debian image which still only recognized one CPU and one core.

After another long stretch of trial and error, I successfully installed Proxmox 4.4 on top of Debian 8 (w/ Full Table APIC enabled in BIOS) which recognized both processors and all 32 cores (w/ hyper-threading). Strangely, the standalone Proxmox 4.4 image would not boot. Honestly, sticking with Proxmox 4.4 is more than adequate for my needs, however, this problem is still bugging me, especially after reading about others who are successfully running more recent Proxmox releases on the same hardware.

Any feedback would be gratefully appreciated! I suspect this has more to do with Debian itself rather than Proxmox and is probably something painfully obvious. If so, I apologize! I just recently began my journey into the server, VM, home-lab world and am fascinated by the power and flexibility of Proxmox!

Best,

mkaicher

i would try to reset bios settings, there is no need to change anything maybe beside of power options.

p420 in hba mode, afaik, dosnt allow to boot from it, you will need some other boot media - at least for grub

ve 5 and ve 6 works just fine on gen8
 
Thanks for the replies.

i would try to reset bios settings, there is no need to change anything maybe beside of power options.
Is there anything displayed on the screen? As @phs already said, there is no problem running on those machines.

I cannot get past the GRUB boot page using default BIOS settings. Only after disabling MPS Table Mode can I proceed with the installation. But again, the installed system only recognizes one CPU/core. With version 4.4, I can install with default MPS Table setting and the system recognizes all 32 cores.

p420 in hba mode, afaik, dosnt allow to boot from it, you will need some other boot media - at least for grub

I have my small 128GB SSD on internal SATA for the boot drive. The larger HDDs are connected via the P420i in hba mode.

ve 5 and ve 6 works just fine on gen8

I have read about others' success installing on gen8. This person seems to have had the same problem (https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/dl-380-p-gen-8-exchange-afterwards-only-1-core.57663/). While I have ACPI SLIT enable, there is no option to enable x2APIC support in my BIOS, or any of the BIOS versions I've tried, for that matter. :confused:

These two options must be enabled on DL 380 p Gen 8.:
  • ACPI SLIT Preferences = enabled
  • x2APIC Support = enabled
 

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