B200 M5 - configured and actual boot order differ

[itm.i11.team]

Hello,

we are using the following setup:
- B200 M5 Blade Server
- Firmware Server: 3.2(3a)
- Firmware UCSM: 3.2(3a)

The Boot Order looks like this:

After assigning the service profile with those settings and booting the server, the UCSM shows a different "Configured Boot Order" and "Actual Boot Order":

Also if I look into the boot menu (press F6 during the boot process) the SD card is not shown. The Bios tells me that the SD card as boot option is disabled.
But I can do a Boot Override in the Bios to start from SD card.

I tried several things e.g. re-acknowledgement or factory reset to change this behaviour but without success. Does anyone witnessed the same problem?

Regards
 Martin

[Kirk J]

Greetings.

In your configured boot options, I don't see the local device, SD card that should be there.

In your localdisk policy, please confirm you have the flexflash enabled.

Config vs actual can frequently be different if the configured devices aren't actually active/available (i.e. remote virtual media doesn't actually have any NFS or CIFs ISO mounts defined)

Thanks,

Kirk...

[itm.i11.team]

Hi Kirk,

I created a Boot Policy with only a SD Card as option. When I boot the server it starts right into the Cisco UEFI Interactive Shell e.g. no booting from SD.

The local disk configuration policy is the same as yours except for the Mode. When we started to use SD cards a few years ago we had problems with the Mode set to "RAID 1". Our solution was to use "Any Configuration".

The strange thing we have some servers running with the same configuration. Same chassis, same server type, same firmware and same service profile template in the back.

Maybe there is an issue with the FlexFlash Controller or the SD cards themselves?

the strange thing is we have some servers that work with the same configuration.

[Evan Mickel]

I believe Kirk was also referencing your configured boot order from the first screen cap you sent.  The SD card is not listed as a boot option.

The disk config policy looks fine, it would seem that the underlying disks are at least configured at this point.  As mentioned, the boot order that you initially sent does not contain the SD card boot option.

My follow up would be, when you had this second boot order configured that as you say, had only the SD card available, was an OS installed on the cards at that time?

Thanks!

[Evan Mickel]

Quick follow up as well, make sure that your CIMC and BIOS versions are aligned as they should be within the selected firmware, the CIMC version and BIOS version may differ per version and the numbers will not align making it slightly confusing to easily see if the versions are correct.  I've seen version mismatches create havoc during the boot sequence/honoring the boot order.

It looks like the correct versions for an M5 at 3.2(3a) should be:

• • ucs-b200-m5-bios.B200M5.3.2.3c.0.0307181316.bin

  • ucs-b200-m5-k9-cimc.3.1.26a.bin

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/release/notes/CiscoUCSManager-RB-3-2.html

Thanks again!

[itm.i11.team]

The firmware is according to the ones you stated. Furthermore the SD cards had been scrubed before booting. I used for scrubbing the "Format" option of the FlexFlash Controller as well a scrub policy with enabled FlexFlash Scrub.

I am still confused about the behaviour and therefore contacted our support.

But I have also figured out a workaround to get the SD cards working for our purpose:

1. Boot Policy and LocalDisk Policy as described above

2. Boot server and enter Bios (e.g. F6 during startup an choose "Enter Setup")

3. Enable Boot Option #4 with "CiscoVD Hypervisor"

4. Save & Exit -> Boot Override -> CiscoVD Hypervisor, save configuration and exit Bios

Now the server wants to boot from SD card – therefore recognizes them – and boots afterwards from Network.