iSCSI boot M620 with PSx110

Question

Hi. I'm trying to set up iSCSI boot of our diskless M620 blades (with Broadcom 57810S NIC) from PS group (consisting of PS6110XS and 6110X). I followed the latest documentation - which is for 11G servers - http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/storage/w/wiki/2647.configuring-dell-poweredge-11g-servers-running-windows-server-2008-for-iscsi-san-boot-by-sis.aspx Basically I have: - created a LUN on the EQL group, set the access to 'not restricted' for simplicity sake - on the M620, I've configured the BIOS setting according to the documentation Now when the server is booting, 2 things happen: 1) if boot mode is set to UEFI, there's just black screen during the time when the network card should be connecting to the EQL LUN and nothing happens 2) if boot mode is set to BIOS, then the initiator successfully connects - logs in to the EQL target When 2) is used, the boot process then proceeds with starting OS setup (Windows 2008 R2) from the virtual media - ISO connected via iDRAC7 virtual media. On the screen where target drive/volume is to be selected, where the OS should be installed, the LUN is not shown (which is  to be expected), so I load the EVDB and W2k8 (NDIS) drivers from the latest extracted Broadcom drivers release. Both drivers load fine, but the LUN is still not displayed - multiple refresh doesn't help, waiting any amount of time does neither. On my EQL group, I can see two events: - first is the successful logon attempt - iSCSI login to target '192.168.130.131:3260, iqn.2001-05.com.equallogic:0-1cb196-346d3be07-4ec6625386850892-test' from initiator '192.168.130.150:15146, iqn.1995-05.com.broadcom.iscsiboot' successful, using standard frame length. - second is roughly 5 minutes later - iSCSI session to target '192.168.130.131:3260, iqn.2001-05.com.equallogic:0-1cb196-346d3be07-4ec6625386850892-test' from initiator '192.168.130.150:15146, iqn.1995-05.com.broadcom.iscsiboot' was closed. iSCSI initiator connection failure.No response on connection for 6 seconds. Can anyone help? Why doesn't the initiator even try to login to the target when UEFI mode is used? Is iSCSI boot unsupported in this case? Boot order is configured the same in both modes (ie. first is the NIC port connected to the EQL (via chassis switches), second is the virtual cd). Speculating that maybe the connection is timing out because it takes the OS loader so long to load since it's going via iDRAC's virtual media and that's slow as hell? Thanks in advance

Zipacna · Answer

Thanks Don, great info, I'll try the above suggestions and report back.

Zipacna · Answer

NIC firmware was up to date (7.2.20). I updated the system BIOS to 1.3.6 and probably the critical step was to integrate the Broadcom drivers to the Windows installation image using the KB974042.

After that I saw the LUN from the OS installation and could proceed further (despite EQL logged the connection timeout again).

Zipacna · Answer

I tried the process again with UEFI boot mode with no luck. Is boot from SAN not supported under UEFI?

DELL-Margaret B · Answer

Just wanted to let you know that a new paper on this topic is available here: Configuring Windows Server 2008 R2 for iSCSI SAN Boot with EqualLogic Storage You can watch the page EqualLogic Technical Content for additional new content for Boot from SAN for Windows 2012.

EqualLogic

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