UCS boot order

[christopher.eakin]

Here is our scenario....

Our current boot order is:  1.  SD Card  2.  Lan boot

What I would like to do is if there is no OS on the SD card then it should by-pass the SD card and then boot from LAN via PXE.  Then VMWare Auto-deploy would then deploy the ESX OS.  Once the OS is deployed, then the SD card would then boot first and not LAN boot.

Here is my problem.  When it attempts to boot from SD card if gives me an error message that states, "not a bootable disk.  press any key"  I don't want to have to console into every blade and press enter.  in order to PXE boot.  Why isn't UCS just smart enough to by-pass if there is no OS on the SD card?

[Walter Dey]

Isn't ESXi offering exactly this feature ?

see KB article

Understanding vSphere Auto Deploy Stateless Caching and Stateful Installs (2032881)

First Boot	Subsequent Boots
For stateful installs, Auto Deploy installs the image.	For stateful installs, the host boots from disk.
For stateless caching, Auto Deploy provisions the host and caches the image.	For stateless caching, Auto Deploy provisions the host. If Auto Deploy provisioned the host before but stateless caching was not set up before, Auto Deploy caches the image. If Auto Deploy provisioned the host before and cached the image, Auto Deploy provisions the host using the information in the rules. If Auto Deploy is unavailable, the host boots from the cached image.

[christopher.eakin]

We are using stateful a sort of hybrid.  We are useing Auto-deploy to depoy ESX onto the internal SD card.  I guess you could call it statelessly deployed stateful install.  We want it to PXE boot for auto-deploy to deploy the image to the SD card, and from then on, boot from SD card.

[Walter Dey]

isn't this exactly what statefull does ?

First boot, pxe and install on disk

Next boots, boot from disk

I think a boot policy with only one entry: boot from lan (Pxe) should do it ?

[christopher.eakin]

Actually, it doesn't.  If Lan Boot is first in the boot order it simple keeps booting from LAN and re laying the image on the SD cards.  We want to boot from LAN once, then boot from SD card after the image i deployed.

[christopher.eakin]

Well apparently, this is a known bug already reported to Cisco.

https://bst.cloudapps.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCva14937/?referring_site=bugquickviewredir

This bug was supposed to have been fixed in 3.1(2f).  However, I'm running 3.2(1d) and I'm still experiencing the issue.  Seems they fixed the CD/DVD and the Local Drive issue, but didn't address it with SD Cards.  I'll have to re-open a TAC case on this.