Cisco UCS - rackmount servers - boot from SD card

[liamjmitch]

Hi

I have a number of C420 M3's that have no local storage except for the 16GB SD card in slot 1.

The other storage in it is fusion io (for a VDI implementation) cards which wouldn't be seen or desired to install esxi onto.

I have joined them to UCSM since I see on 2.1(2a) the HV boot partition can be enabled from a local disk config policy by a simple tick now.

However no matter what combination of local disk config and boot policy config try I just never gets seen.

Is this a b series only option? Or do I have to do anything to them as standalone servers first to make it be seen?

The c series version came with pretty much the latest version of bios on 1.5 something.

Anyone any ideas?

Thanks

[padramas · Accepted solution]

Hello Liam,

The FlexFlash SD card partitions can not be enabled when the C-Series is integrated into UCSM because there is currently not a mechanism for managing the SD card like there is in CIMC.

It is planned for next major release of UCSM

Until then, pleas try the following as a work around.

Enable the HV partition in standalone mode of CIMC and then integrate with UCSM. Then change the BIOS boot order ( press F2 to enter BIOS menu ) to boot from HV partition

Padma