Correct disk/boot policies for VMware with C220 M5 + MSTOR-M2 + SAS-M5??

[DRAGONKZ]

I've trailing some C220 M5 servers in my UCS Mini (with B200 M4s) home lab and just wanted to clarify the right disk and boot policy settings for this setup.

The servers have a UCS-MSTOR-M2 module with 240GB SSD and also a UCSC-SAS-M5 controller with multiple SAS SSDs.

I'm looking to run VMware ESXi 7.0 U2 and to boot from the single 240GB M2 drive, and use the SAS SSDs for a VMware vSAN datastore.

My Boot Policy is:

UEFI, boot Security enabled, and Embedded Local Disk with primary and slot 1 selected

My BIOS Policy has:

P-SATA mode set to AHCI

My Storage Policy has:

Auto Config Mode = Unspecified

Controller Definition set to enable protect configuration and RAID level set to "No RAID"

Local Disk Configuration Policy = Nothing configured, so I have one for this use case?

During the POST I can see a "M.2 SWRAID configuration is not detected. Switching to AHCI mode. warning

In the BIOS, under advanced, then LOM and PCIe Slots Configuration:

pSATA SATA OpROM = LSI SW RAID

M.2 SATA OpROM = AHCI

In UCS manager for this server under inventory, storage, I can see:

Storage Controller PCH 4 = AHCI mode

Storage Controller SAS 1

Storage Controller SATA 3 = SWRAID mode

According to this article https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/servers-unified-computing/ucs-b-series-blade-servers/213757-installing-operating-systems-vmware-wi.html you simply need to create a controller definition with no-raid, and enable the p-sata to ahci, and that should take care of it.

Is anyone able to help explain why after doing the above I'm still seeing the p-SATA mode set to SWRAID?

Thanks

[baughmann1]

Did you ever figure out how to solve this?

I have a UCS-MSTOR-M2 in a C240 M5. Like you, I was able to install ESXi on one of the NVMe drives, but was unable to boot from it, even after hours of research and trial and error.

Curiously, I have no problems booting from SD cards, on the same server!

I wish I had known that ESXi on the MSTOR-M2 was unsupported, this should be added to the documentation.

[Steven Tardy]

The M.2 (PID: UCS-MSTOR-M2) does support booting ESXi. That's kind of the whole point of this M.2 disk. . . . to boot the OS.

Does the ESXi install "see" the M.2 disk?
Or could be the BIOS/CIMC settings are not correct.
If you boot to the UEFI Shell and run `map -b` or `devtree -b` do you see the M.2(SATA) disk?
If not then the M.2 controller may be unseated. (See: CSCvy63223). Check `sensors` output from that CDET.

The non-RAID/JBOD UCS-MSTOR-M2 works in both Legacy and UEFI mode.
The RAID UCS-M2-HWRAID requires UEFI.

[baughmann1]

Yes ESXi sees the NVMe drive and installs to it just fine. I'm guessing it
fails to properly create a UEFI boot entry or something because when the
machine restarts after install no boot options are detected aside from
PXE/UEFI shell/USB etc.

The M.2 is not configurable in CIMC from as far as I can tell. I've
attempted to modify the boot order by manually adding PCH and NVMe entries
to no avail. For craps and giggles I decided to try it with a PCIe M.2
board and got the same result. When I attempted with the SD card it worked
just fine.

I'll run the command you gave in the UEFI shell and take a look at the
output.

[baughmann1]

Thank you for your help.

After running those commands I did not see anything saying "M.2" anywhere, but there are a LOT of devices listed so it's entirely likely that I missed it. I tried Googling how to filter devices by some string (i.e., "M.2" or "NVMe" or "PCH") but I cannot find a good way and I'm not sure how to pipe the output to a text file on an external USB to dig through it on another machine with CTRL+F

That said, if I can install ESXi to it and other OSes see the drives, I'm assuming its safe to say that it's probably plugged in correctly. Why the boot entries aren't added or the UEFI doesn't see it as a boot option is beyond me.

Any ideas to try?

[DRAGONKZ]

Just confirming when i posted the original question, I didn't have any issues with the drive working, it was more so that the P-SATA controller was not updating as per UCSM policies.

I've since re-configured these servers as non-UCS managed and have no issues as well.

If you're running on non-UCS managed mode as well, perhaps post some pictures of your config and ill compare to mine.

[baughmann1]

Thanks for your response.

Yep, I'm running these standalone. What should I post pictures of, just
BIOS settings and boot order?

[clethbridge]

Yes, the "configure boot order" page in CIMC, the sub-pages in the configure boot order/advanced dialogs (including luns and any other details) and the bios settings pages relevant to the UCS-MSTOR-M2 would be very helpful!

I have been working to set up a used HXAF240c-M5 and have not been able to get system booting from the UCS-MSTOR-M2 either.