Recently I installed 2 FusionIO drives for a client and ran into a few problems. I found the solution for these problems and decided to write a blogpost about it.
First be sure to install the Operating System with alle the latest updates. In my case I was dealing with 2 HP DL380H9 Performance servers running Windows Server 2008 R2 (for application purposes). I did a clean install and afterwards I installed all the Windows updates. The first server took for ever to download and install them, so I decided to slipstream all the updates to a newly created Windows installation ISO (maybe another post).
Then I downloaded the latest drivers (version 4.2.1 in my case) here. Make sure you select the right OS type. After this step turn off the server and unplug the power. Carefully install the FusionIO card and start the server again. In my case Windows Device Manager found the device after a rescan for drivers and I saw the fusionIO card. The card was running in minimal mode, this is common behavior and it means that you have to upgrade the firmware. So enough said, let’s upgrade the firmware :
It took about 20 minutes and as you can see in the screenshot everything went fine. I restarted the server to activate the new firmware. Windows Server was rebooting and it took a very long time to boot (40 minutes instead of 5 seconds) :
After 35 minutes (approx) I saw the following error for a few minutes :
Again a few minutes later I was able to login to the server and saw that following error :
I saw it had a problem attaching the fusion to the Operating System. Attaching manually didn’t do the job. The command for this : fio-attach /dev/fct0. The reason that the devicename is bold, is that I’m running Windows Server and not Linux, VMware or another Linux build. So I tried several times without the /dev/ and ofcourse it didn’t work. Even the PDF files and the support site of SANDISK didn’t explain that.
Alright, I thought I do a format of the device :
Formatting didn’t do the job also. The solution was to secure erase the card :
After this step, I could format the drive and use Windows Storage Manager to assign a drive letter. While troubleshooting I created a case at the support website of SANDISK but I never heard of them again.. (Only a casenumber) I think support could be better for such expensive products. After installing the cards the client (and I) were pleased about the performance although.