Trying to find the ESXi boot device

[cmcgcdw]

I have a customer that needs to upgrade their ESXi 6.0U3 blades to ESXi 7.   There are some issues with storage where things are not mapped according to best practices (long story), and as a result, they are unsure where the individual blades are booting from.

I pulled the knowledgebase article on how to locate this.  Started with the command "ls -l / | grep boot".   This returns the bootbank and the altbootbank virtual links.  However, if I try to then do the vmkfstools -P <device path>, the system returns an error saying path not found for both.

Sure enough, if I go into the /vmfs/volumes folder, they aren't there.  And there are no "blank" names (my lab has some that look blank but are apparently hidden device names.  While they aren't visible in the list there, I can cd into those paths in my lab box.  Not sure how to make the system actually show these. 

I then tried just dumping a list of all the volumes on the system using "esxcli storage core device list" and capturing the output.  Went through looking at all the devices, and NONE are reporting they are the boot device.  

Since these are Cisco UCS servers, I went into the Cisco UCS manager thinking I might find something there, but there was nothing unique (that I could tell) that would point me in the right direction.

I'm stumped.  How do we locate where this server is booting from?

TIA

Cliff

[scott28tt]

Your post needs moving to the correct area, so I have reported it to the moderators.

[Vaclav_S]

http://howto.odkud.com/2022/09/13/identify-esxi-boot-disk/

[cmcgcdw]

If this isn't the correct area, could you please be so kind as to point me to the correct area?  This area seemed to be the closest match to what I needed to discuss.  

Just telling me I'm in the wrong area doesn't really help me fix the issue....I would appreciate some guidance if I'm not doing it right. 

[cmcgcdw]

This process specifically does not work.  While I can identify the bootbank and altbootbank, the next step tells me that the path cannot be found.  This is the entire reason for this post in the first place.  I'm trying to figure out how to work around this.  

[scott28tt]

There is an area for ESXi, a moderator should move your post there now I reported it, you’ll know it moved if you look at the path just above your initial comment.

I reported lots of threads today, I didn’t have time to elaborate with my previous comment.