Test results for Dell Poweredge R770 with NVMe drives

[yllar]

I will share some test results for the community, maybe helps somebody.

1. Server spec:

This is the latest generation Dell server with Intel Efficiency core CPUs and NVMe disks.
All firmware and BIOS versions are latest as of 28.04.2025

Dell Poweredge R770
2.5" Chassis with up to 8 NVMe HWRAID Drives, Front PERC 12 (H965i)
2 x Intel Xeon 6 Efficient 6740E 2.4G, 96C/96T, 24GT/s, 96M Cache, Turbo, (250W) DDR5-6400
BOSS-N1 controller card + with 2 M.2 480GB (RAID 1) (22x80) Rear
Broadcom 57508 Dual Port 100GbE QSFP56, OCP NIC 3.0
2 x 800G Data Center NVMe Mixed Use AG Drive U2 Gen4 with carrier
2 x 32GB RDIMM, 6400MT/s, Dual Rank

Virtual disks set up in iDRAC:
vd1 - RAID1 (2 x 480GB) virtual disk configured in iDRAC
vd2 - RAID1 (2 x 800G) virtual disk configured in Perc H965i

2. Results for latest XCP-ng 8.2

Virtual disks and network is detected normally.
XCP-ng installation to vd1 is successful.
Since vd2 has 4K sectors, it is not usable in a standard way.
Need to use SR with type=largeblock (https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/8901/largeblocksr-for-4kib-blocksize-disks).
Currently only one SR with type=largeblock can be created in one host. Adding multiple will cause errors.
In the long run there will be support for 4k sector NVMe disks with SMAPIv3 (https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2024/04/19/first-smapiv3-driver-is-available-in-preview/)

3. Results for latest XCP-ng 8.3

Never reaches install console
Fails to detect storage and network
Gets stuck at "Started Update UTMP about System Runlevel Changes." as seen on screenshot.
I did try starting install console with command "/opt/xensource/installer/preinit console" and it started but cant get too far with it, see last 2 screenshots

[olivierlambert]

Ping @dthenot

[yllar]

Reping @dthenot

[mik]

@yllar said in Test results for Dell Poweredge R770 with NVMe drives:

@dthenot

Good evening. I'm new to XCP-ng.
I'm evaluating the migration from Esxi for some of our customers.

@dthenot

I have the same failure with Dell Poweredge R760 with same BOSS N1 and PERC H965i,
with this sequence:

[FAILED] Failed to start udev Wait for Complete Devide Initialization.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for XCP-ng Installer.

[FAILED] Failed to start Activation of LVM2 logical volumes.

[FAILED] Failed to start LSB: Enable some devices previously disabled.

@dthenot can "enlighten me" which 8.2.1 rpms could be injected into a custom 8.3 ISO to resolve the installation boot error ?

[xcp-ng-8.2.1-20231130.iso] works fine.

tks

[olivierlambert]

That's a mission for the team platform (bug in NodeBB I can't ping it anymore, so pinging @stormi to redirect it)

[mik]

many thanks for your answer

this seems to be common to other installation issue posts with Dell BOSS-N1, PERC H755, H965i ... and happens only starting from 8.3 LTS

[olivierlambert]

I think it's related to a Broadcom NIC issue that we identified. @stormi will be able to give a test ISO to verify this hypothesis

[mik]

in my first XCP-ng test server, I have this Broadcom network adapters (Dell R760):

a) Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet (BCM5720)
b) Broadcom Adv. Quad 25Gb Ethernet
c) Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet BCM5719
d) Broadcom BCM57504 4x25G SFP28 PCIE
e) Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet BCM5719

adapters at point a) ad b) are integrated (but I can try to disable them using BIOS),
the other adapters can be disabled also extracting them (PCI).

if useful I can do that and identify which one is causing 8.3 installation boot stuck

[Pilow]

@olivierlambert eager to test this new ISO, we have two XCP clusters in 8.2 that need upgrading in 8.3 with these cards :

• BCM57416 NetXtreme-E Dual-Media 10G RDMA Ethernet Controller

Do you think we would be impacted ?

These same servers also have I350 Gigabit Network Connectioncard (quad port)

[olivierlambert]

I think it's only the Broadcom NIC

[acebmxer]

FYI we have the Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet (BCM5720) in Dell R660 and Broadcom Adv. Dual 10GBASE-T Ethernet in Dell r640.

Currently have no issues with ether nic in XCP-NG 8.3