We are using Sun Microsystems Sun Fire x4100 servers which have several nice advanced features. We have everything in our Data Center running these servers except our Astaro Firewall. The problem with v6 was simply it did not support the SAS1064 SCSI/Raid controllers so there was no disk to install to. I am very happy to say that it seems that v7 will support these controllers, but there is still an issue to overcome.
The x4100 is available with 2 different Chassis, with CDROM and without CDROM. If you loose CDROM you gain 2 SAS drive slots. Our servers are the without CDROM type. To install from CDROM you can use Sun's ILOM system which has nice little Java Client that gives you KVM control, and also allows you to forward a local cdrom device, or cdrom image to the server to boot from.
So I downloaded the v7 beta iso, and forwarded it to one of my x4100s. When I get to the "Hardware Detection" screen it actually see's my LSI SAS1064 controllers (both with a RAID set or without), but under "Hard Drives" it also sees my "AMI Virtual Floppy" with a size of 0MB. The "Virtual Floppy" is part of Sun's ILOM systems, and does exist. The problem is Astaro v7 is trying to install to it, since its in the list of Hard Drive first, and the installation fails. If we can get the install to not use these virtual devices as installation targets, I feel that v7 will install on my x4100's (which will make me a die hard Astaro evangelist).
Are there any options I can pass Astro at boot prompt to say, "Ignore Virtual Devices", or better yet specify the exact "Hard Drive" to install to? If not, is there any other way to make this work?
I could donate time on one of these servers to the Astaro Dev team if that would help. Please.
Thanks,
Digiport-Bram