ESX3.5 Qlogic iSCSI QLE4062C ESX-boot takes 15 minutes due to qla4022 could not initialize

[harry]

Need to prepare ESX-Server 3.5 offsite without ISCSI-Storage available. Boot from internal disk. I followed KB1004051 and made shure bootmode DHCP is disabled in iSCSI BIOS.

Anyhow I was not able even to install ESX3.5 from CD because QLA4022 driver wants to initiate. I went again into ISCSI BIOS and set IPV4 to NO. This helped me to install ESX3.5 succesfully.

But I made a test and switched ISCSI BIOS IPV4 back to YES and now a boot takes about 15 min to come up with message: Initialization for qla4022 failed with -19 meaning qla4022 driver is not loaded. Must I connect the iSCSI HBAs to the iSCSI Storage-Ports to get out of this behaviour ? Will it be sufficient if qla4022-driver will find the initiator's IP without LUNs mapped ? I do not know this behaviour when connection FC-HBAs.

Regards Harry

[BenConrad]

If it's a genuine Qlogic card you can call Qlogic directly any time you want. If it's a Qlogic card with an EMC or IBM serial # you have to call EMC (infoX) for support, not sure about IBM.

Anyway, you can update the BIOS/FW in ESX 3.5 with iscli, here is a snippet that may help:

logger -s "Install SANsurfer CLI app"

tar -C /tmp/postconfig/installs/qlogic -zxvf /tmp/postconfig/installs/qlogic/iscli-1.1.00-13_linux_i386.install.tar.gz ; cd /tmp/postconfig/installs/qlogic ; ./iscli.dkms.install.sh install

# You may see an error about not being able to locate the qla4xxx driver,

# this is ok. It's looking for a Linux (not ESX) driver

#

logger -s "Update firmware and Bios.

/usr/local/bin/iscli -f 0 /tmp/postconfig/installs/qlogic/qla4022.dl

sleep 5

/usr/local/bin/iscli -bootcode 0 /tmp/postconfig/installs/qlogic/ql4022rm.BIN

sleep 5

logger -s "Update firmware and Bios.

/usr/local/bin/iscli -f 1 /tmp/postconfig/installs/qlogic/qla4022.dl

sleep 5

/usr/local/bin/iscli -bootcode 1 /tmp/postconfig/installs/qlogic/ql4022rm.BIN

sleep 5

logger -s "Configuring Qlogic HBA 0"

#/usr/local/bin/iscli 0 -n TCP_Auto_Discovery off

/usr/local/bin/iscli 0 -n IP_ARP_Redirect on

/usr/local/bin/iscli 0 -n KeepAliveTO 130

/usr/local/bin/iscli 0 -n Large_Frames off

/usr/local/bin/iscli 0 -n ExeThrottle 128

#keeping this in case we use a recycled card that has it set

/usr/local/bin/iscli 0 -n MaxOutstandingR2T 1

logger -s "Configuring Qlogic HBA 1"

#/usr/local/bin/iscli 1 -n TCP_Auto_Discovery off

/usr/local/bin/iscli 1 -n IP_ARP_Redirect on

/usr/local/bin/iscli 1 -n KeepAliveTO 130

/usr/local/bin/iscli 1 -n Large_Frames off

/usr/local/bin/iscli 1 -n ExeThrottle 128

#keeping this in case we use a recycled card that has it set

/usr/local/bin/iscli 1 -n MaxOutstandingR2T 1

logger -s "setting qla timeout and queue"

esxcfg-module -s 'ql4xmaxqdepth=200 ql4xportdownretrycount=60' qla4022

esxcfg-boot -p

esxcfg-module -g qla4022

[jbrown9999]

I have a blend of the problems listed here. I have ESX U3 on an IBM 3850 with 2 Qlogic 4062c iSCSI HBA's. On my first box, I followed all the directions about flashing the firmware, etc. (used a USB floppy) and that box works fine now. All HBA's are connected and showing. After working on that box, i had to install some W2K3 servers and to get multipath working had to update both firmware and bios. So, on my second ESX box, my floppy already had the latest bios and firmware so i did both. (What a dumba$$) Now, the only HBA that shows is the first one which is the one I attempted to configure before the firmware flash and none of the others do.

I know, confusing post, basically, i have 4 Qlogic ports and only 1 is showing. I did a lspci on both the fully functioning server and the second one and they read the Qlogic cards the same. In addition, i don't what bios shipped on the stupid cards so i don't know which rev to bring them back to.

Oh, and i also now have the 20 minute boot up cycle mentioned before, which i hadn't had.

Thoughts, suggestions?

[infuseweb]

Old thread, but seems this issue has never been resolved. I just ran into it after I bought an Equallogic SAN which supports Jumbo Frames. Enabled Jumbo Frames on the two QLA 4050c's i have in each PowerEdge 2950 and ESX 3.5 U4 failed to start. Went crazy trying to figure it out. It gets past loading the qla4022 driver, then hangs for a bit on loading vmfs3, but finally hangs with an insmod usb-storage failed. Thinking it was a hardware failure I rebulit the SCSI array, and obviously that didn't fix it. Only setting the MTU back to 1500 did everything work again. Frustrating!

I even just updated to the latest Dell bioses and QLA firmware as of this date and still no luck. I don't understand why this continues to be a problem when jumbo frames support is now commonplace.