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How to revert a C200 M2 to standalone mode?

BrentBaccala
Level 1
Level 1

Hi -

 

I've got a C200 M2 that I pulled from a rack unpowered.  It had previously been managed by UCS Manager, so I booted into its BIOS and reset its CIMC to factory defaults.  Now it DHCPs and I can manage it via its web interface and KVM just fine.

 

One problem, though... I can't boot off its local drives.

 

Now I see a statement in the Server Installation and Service Guide:

 

Also, if you revert a server to standalone mode without disassociating its service profile, any LSI RAID
controller will not show as a bootable device in the standalone server, preventing local booting.

 

That seems to be exactly the situation I've got.  It's an LSI 1064e RAID controller.  I can netboot into Linux and work on the drives, so I know they're installed and cabled, but they don't show as bootable devices.

 

How can I recover from this?  Updating firmware, reset to factory defaults... none of this seems to work!

 

10 Replies 10

Kirk J
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

You will need to go into the CIMC, BIOS, boot order and create a boot order entry for local disk, and reference the PCI-E slot (or mezz slot) that the raid controller is in.

 

Kirk...

How do I do that?  I don't see any option to reference the mezzanine slot when I configure the boot order.

 

For that matter, I don't see any option to create a boot order entry, only options to set the boot order, i.e:

 

Screenshot from 2020-02-16 11-15-57.pngScreenshot from 2020-02-16 11-16-20.png

 

Sorry, it's the newer firmware versions that reference the actual PCI-E slots.

I don't have anything in the lab with that old of firmware to test with.

If you can't get it to boot with the local generic 'HDD' item as you have it shown, then you may need to check in the F2 setup to see if there is a way to change boot order

Also do you have any options to boot to if you pick the F6 manual boot menu?

 

m2 boot.JPG

I thought that this was the newest firmware.  I updated it using ucs-c200-huu-1.4.3z09.iso, which was the newest thing I saw on the downloads page.  Is there a newer version that I should be using?

No, I don't see anything useful on the F2 BIOS Boot Options or F6 boot menu.

 

Please check your BIOS, LOM/Option ROM section ,and make sure the option ROM is enable for slot the raid controller is in (not sure which slot your raid controller is in).  May be 'mezz' or 'Sas'

Again, those (c200 m2) servers haven't been supported at all in at least a couple of years, and I don't have any more of them in the lab to check.

 

Kirk...

Looks like the mezzanine option ROM is enabled:

 

Screenshot from 2020-02-16 14-13-47.png

I think your question is a good one, since I don't see any boot time messages from the RAID controller.  Based on the documentation, I expect to be able to get into a RAID configuration tool on boot, but I can't.  I can only configure RAID by booting into the Server Configuration Utility.

I have seen some instances where there are enough option roms loading that the actual one you want, has issues loading.

I would try disabling all the other ones (i.e. NIC1 PXE, NIC2 PXE, and Slot #6 option ROM), and then see if you have any luck the with Megaraid option rom loading.  If the option rom isn't loading, than the  boot option won't see the virtual drive it hosts either.

 

Kirk... 

Disabling the option ROMs doesn't seem to help.

 

I decided to try plugging it into a fabric extender, hoping that if I decommission it in UCS Manager, it will start working right stand-alone.

 

I get an "illegal FRU" in my server status in UCS Manager; "The server is either deprecated or not supported" in the fault detail.

 

C200 M2 doesn't appear in my Capability Catalog.  This is UCS Manager 3.1(1e).

 

Does this approach seem like it might work?  And if so, how can I get UCS Manager to handle a C200 M2?

 

UCS C200-M2, were never supported with UCSM integrated.

Only option would connecting it as 'appliance', and it does not 'discover' it or apply service profile, etc.

 

Kirk...

Well, I finally got one working (I've got eight machines in this weird configuration).

The only thing I found that worked was to reconnect them to a fabric interconnect running UCS Manager 2.2(6f).  It was the same FI that the servers were connected to originally, so it already had their configurations saved.  Then I, yup, disassociated the C200 from its service profile and decommissioned the server.  Then, when it booted, it was in standalone mode and I saw the boot-time messages from the LSI BIOS.  Haven't finished the install, but it seems to over a major hurdle.

That should handle five of the eight machines.  I've still got two more that I updated the firmware on and was fiddling with every BIOS setting imaginable.  They're not coming up cleanly in UCS Manager; I'm thinking about downgrading their firmware to the same version they were running before.  And there's one more machine that doesn't appear anywhere in UCS Manager's server inventory.

C200-M2's are definitely integrated in this version of UCS Manager (here's a picture), and I'll post a further update in case anybody else has this problem, but this thread is definitely moving towards Solved!

Screenshot from 2020-02-28 11-21-17.png

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