I have just taken delivery of the base spec Microserver gen8. I have installed a WD 1Tb drive in slot 1, and the BIOS/RAID controller finds it. However when I come to install Win server 2012 r2 it cannot find a drive and asks for a driver. I have downloaded all 3 drivers from the HP site onto a usb stick, which is recognised by the installer, but none of the drivers (all .exe files) are deemed valid by the installer.
Can anyone tell me how to get beyond square one on this? I am embarrassed to have fallen at this first basic hurdle!!
(if only it was esxi then I wouldn't have any wretched driver issues, but the box cannot run esxi)
Best Answer
It's almost like there's a guide you can follow for this :)
But the quickest option for you may be to bootstrap your Windows 2012 R2 installation by using the HP Intelligent Provisioning Utility baked into the system BIOS.
Use the opportunity to update the system BIOS and firmware as well.
The Smart Array RAID controller on the Microserver is the culprit here. It requires a proprietary drive that needs to be loaded before the OS. Intelligent Provisioning will do that for you under Windows 2012 R2.
For Linux and other operating systems, we have to get creative.