UCS C240M3 Boot from HDD not showing as option

[Nathan Farrar]

I'be been banging my head on this for a while now. I've attempted all of the other solutions I've found here. Basically, I'm trying to get the server to boot ESXi off of virtual disk 0. This is what I've done so far:

• Booted into WebGUI for the LSI RAID controller
• Cleared out everything and started new
• Created 2 virtual drives. One RAID 1 (VD0) at set it to be the boot drive. the other is RAID 6 and will be for storage
• Rebooted server. 
• Opened up KVM and set ISO to boot.
• Installed ESXi onto the VD0 sucessfully
• Rebooted
• System does not try to boot into ESXi, option for controller doesn't exist. Ends up trying to get image from PXE or booting into the EFI shell

What I've tried / settings:

in CIMC I have under BIOS configured boot mode set to "legacy"

 - I've tried setting it to UEFI but no change.

- Actual boot order shows:

   UEFI: Built in Shell and a bunch of IBA GE Slot items

In BIOS I've found that the LSI controller is in Slot 3 and is currently set to "Enabled" under optionROM. I've tried sticking this to "legacy" as well, but still doesn't show up.

I followed along on this post:

https://community.cisco.com/t5/unified-computing-system/ucs-c240-m4-will-not-boot-from-local-hdd-using-megaraid-12gb-sas/td-p/2909674

but I can't seem to see any RAID options for boot. 

Thoughts?

[Kirk J]

Greetings.

Most common issues with customers with similar scenarios as yours:

• Trying to use 4Kn drives (probably not yours as ESXi earlier than 6.7 won't see the storage at all)
• Boot drive is 2TB or larger

Both require UEFI boot mode, and installing OS in UEFI mode.

Thanks,

Kirk...

[mojafri]

Hi Nathan,

Could you please give me more details on the setup ?

1. cimc version? 

2. Is it a new server? Were you able to boot any OS from hdds before? 

3. Are you able to see raid controller after pressing F6 during bootup? 

4. What was the boot mode when you installed the ESXi? legacy or uefi? 

 Regards,

MJ

[Nathan Farrar]

Thanks for the input. I'm fairly sure these aren't 4Kn drives and the partition is not 2TB. It's fairly small.

As far as your questions:

1. CIMC is 2.0(4c)

2. Not a new server. Used. I was able to boot from a SSD that was installed. I removed the SSD since it was part of a Simplivity OmniCube accelerator card assembly. It is a 256GB SSD and I was able to load ESXi on to it and to boot from it, but the original ESXi version was a custom image for the Simplivity. I wanted to get rid of that entirely since I am not going to be utilizing it. 

3. I am not able to see the raid controller after pressing F6

4. I don't know what the boot mode was. Unfortunately i wasn't paying attention at the time. I am going to set it to uefi and try to give it another go.

I appreciate the help. I'm sure this is just a process issue. I am able to boot from the USB drive connected to the console dongle and it finds the virtual disk and loads the OS. When I try to install again, it informs me that it recognizes that the installation already exists. It's just a matter of getting it to boot from that disk. 

It looks like the BIOS can see the RAID card, but no option to boot from it.

[Nathan Farrar · Accepted solution]

It seems I resolved the issue. I took the RAID card that was attached to the Simplivity accelerator and swapped it with the card that was attached to the array I'm trying to boot off of. It now shows up as a boot option and I was able to boot off of it.

It seems it may have been an issue with the RAID card or maybe its configuration. Not sure but I'm not going to mess around with it at this point. Seems to work alright for now!

Thanks for your input!