Cisco UCS B200 no longer booting from the SAN

[MaximChumak]

Hi guys!

I have a Cisco UCS mini with the pair of 6324 fabric interconnects. There were 3 servers, UCS B200 M4, UCS B200 M4, UCS B200 M5. They were booting from Unity 480f, ESXi 7.0.0. We have added the UCS B200 M5 server, had some iisues with vnics, but resolved it. After than we decided to update the Server1 from ESXi 7.0.0 to 7.0.3. Downloaded the image VMware-ESXi-7.0.3o-22348816-Custom-Cisco-4.3.2-a.1.iso. Any configuration updates were made. The Server1 was rebooted, it have seen the boot LUN, hypervisor was installed succesfully. The image was reloaded, the Server1 was rebooted, but the Server1 coldn't booted from SAN.

The Server1 can't see the boot devices. The SAN can't see the initiators (but during the ESXi installation the Unity saw the same initiators). There are 2 errors on the vHBAs

Affected object: sys/chassis-1/blade-1/adaptor-1/host-fc-1

Description : Adapter fc host interface 1/1/1/1 link state: down
Type : network
Cause : link-down
Code : F0207

Affected object : sys/chassis-1/blade-1/adaptor-1/host-fc-1/vif-728
Description : Virtual interface 728 link state is down
Type : management
Cause : vif-down
Code : F0479

I tried installing different versions of images (VMware-ESXi-7.0.3d-19482537-Custom-Cisco-4.2.2-a.iso, VMware_ESXi_7.0.0_15843807_Custom_Cisco_4.1.1a.iso), but the result is the same. I don't think it's the image, because the process doesn't reach the hypervisor boot.

[Steven Tardy]

What changes were made to allow the new server to work?

Were WWNs re-used?

My guess is the fix for the new server broke Server 1.

VIF down is expected when the OS hasn't loaded drivers.

Does the BIOS screen show the LUNs?

Cisco TAC wrote an old UCS SAN Troubleshooting guide:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/servers-unified-computing/ucs-b-series-blade-servers/115764-ucs-san-tshoot-00.html

There are also some Cisco Live presentations:

https://www.ciscolive.com/c/dam/r/ciscolive/global-event/docs/2024/pdf/TACDCN-2008.pdf

[MaximChumak]

Hi Steven,

Were WWNs re-used? Yes, WWNs are the same.

My guess is the fix for the new server broke Server 1.

VIF down is expected when the OS hasn't loaded drivers.

Does the BIOS screen show the LUNs? I can see the LUNs during installing process. After OS was installed and server was rebooted, the server can't boot, the BIOS don't see the LUNs.

Thank you for the links. I'll try.

[MaximChumak]

I have deleted the LUN, created the new one, reinstalled OS. The server had booted from SAN.