PowerEdge: 16G fail to process One-Time Boot through iDRAC

This failure symptom requires a specific setup configuration. This issue affects all AMD and Intel based 16^th Generation servers.

The configuration setup requires the following setup:

• BIOS Boot Mode set to UEFI
• One network adapter enabled for Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) boot
• All bootable devices except one network adapter removed from bootable devices
• Boot Option disabled for one network adapter

This setup configuration locks down all bootable devices and allows a user to control when a network adapter can PXE boot. It prevents a server from booting to any other device until a user interacts.

In order to experience the issue, a user must log in to the iDRAC user interface and navigate to Configuration – BIOS Settings and expand "Boot Settings." Next, “One-Time Boot" is selected. Set the One-Time Boot Device list to "Enabled" and select the PXE enabled network adapter in the "UEFI Boot Sequence Device.”

• Note: The PXE enabled network adapter is the only device available when the configuration is set exactly as noted.

Figure 1: One-Time Boot

Upon applying this configuration and rebooting, the server fails to boot from the PXE device. The server results in finding no boot device at all and present the following message:

Figure 2: No boot device

BIOS dependency issue

This issue is resolved in the following BIOS versions:

• 2.7.5 (or newer) for Intel based servers
• 1.13.1  (or newer) for AMD based servers
• 1.8.0 (or newer) for C6615

Workarounds:

• Use F11 Boot Manager
• Enable more than one PXE device and disable all boot options. This causes more than one device to be present in the UEFI Boot Sequence Device list. Select only the intended network adapter.