boot from san not finding LUN

[A_Knight]

I am trying to get one of my VI3 servers to boot from SAN. The san is an IBM FastT600 (or DS4300).

I have created one 15GB lun and masked it off in its own storage partition so only the wwn of the VI3 servers HBA can access it. The LUN id of this LUN has been set to zero. The owning storage processor of this LUN is SP A.

The HBA (which is a QLogic 2340) has had the BIOS upgraded to 1.50 which is the latest on the qlogic site. It has the BIOS and Boot Selection options enabled.

I have selected the WWN of the storage processor A and the submenu shows that LUN 0 can be seen. I have selected LUN 0 so that the BIOS shows SP A LUN 0 as the boot path & LUN.

I have also verified that the LUN which the HBA bios can see is the correct LUN by changing the LUN id to a different number and seeing if the HBA picks up the new id when a device scan is performed from the HBA. It does so this proves I am looking at the correct LUN.

The settings have been saved to the BIOS and upon reboot the HBA banner shows that it is looking at LUN 0.

When I come to install VI3 (via graphical mode) the blue screen hangs on the QLA driver for around 2-3 minutes. I get a message saying that no storage has been found and it gives me an option to manually select one. I choose the QLA driver (out of a list of the network driver or the qlogic driver) and the install progresses to the point of loading up the proper GUI.

After accepting the licence agreement and selecting keyboard and mouse settings I get a message appearing on the screen saying that no storage has been found at which time the server restarts.

I've been over and over this and I can't see what I am doing wrong. Does anybody have any ideas??

[A_Knight]

I have just tested boot from SAN with windows 2003 and the install and reboot process works without any issues at all. All I have to do was supply an up-to-date HBA driver for windows.

This proves that the SAN & LUN are functioning ok so I can only imagine that the problem lies with VI3 somewhere. I'm not sure where to look next, can anybody help???

[madcult]

Maybe you should set your HBA-BIOS to a fixed negotiation type...

[alfirehawk]

I've been successful in using BFS with VI3 numerous times. I also use BFS with our Windows servers. I'm using Dell 1955 blade servers, and a EMC Clariion CX500 with Brocade switches. Prior to any OS installation (VI3 or even Windows). I only enable a single pathway from my blade server to my SAN.

To make life easy:

\- I always use SPA to own the Boot from SAN LUN.

\- When creating my WWN Alias, I always use FabricA only and only point to the server and SPA only prior to OS installation.

\- I only expose the BFS lun in the storage group.

\- Install the VI3 OS

\- Once the VI3 is installed, I enable all fabric pathways from the server to the SAN.

\- Rescan the HBA's within VI3 or reboot the server

\- Once I verify that all 4 pathways exists, I add the shared luns to the storage group and rescan the HBA's.

VI3 then can manage the connectivity to the SAN (ie. Powerpath).

I've also read somewhere (a long time ago) that the BFS LUN ID needs to be lower than the shared luns.

[A_Knight]

I moved the HBA to another server and tested it and that worked fine so there must be an incompatibility with the server I was using. It was a HP DL145 which I know is not on the HCL but I was hoping I could get it to work some how. Oh well, looks like I'll have to use the DL145 for something else.