Physical connection to server(Gen 9) to MSA 2040 fc does not show in SMU

Concerned Unit

MSA 2040 FC

Symptom

Physical connection to server to MSA 2040 fc does not show in SMU(Storage Management Utility) when the server and storage connected with fiber cables and server is powered on without OS.

Description

When system shows the above symptom, server was not installed with a OS. And above symptom appears even when the server is powered on. At this point, since no operating system is installed server does not boots up. But the fiber cards were get detected by the server BIOS when boots up.

When the physical connection is not there, link LED of the fc port at the controller will blink. When the controller detects the physical connectivity, link LED of fc port at the controller will stop blinking and lights up steadily. 

Since the storage controller does not detect the server(Gen 9) HBA(Host Buss Adaptor), storage SMU shows the ports as disconnected.

Fix

Storage SMU only detects the server HBA, when the driver is loaded. That is OS needs to be installed in order for storage to detect the HBA of the server. If the LUN mapping needs to be done to a server which the OS is not installed, instead of installing the OS, one can boot the  server into Intelligent Provisioning. Since the Intelligent Provisioning is a Linux base OS, it will make the storage detects the server HBA.