Unable to boot UCS blade from SAN

[samtech]

I have cloned an existing profile and attached to a B200M3 blade in UCS 5108 chassis. The initiators seems to register fine on SAN. However, unable to see boot LUN's configured.

* There are no local drives

* First boot order is SAN and Second is cd-rom

Any pointers please.

[Walter Dey]

If you clone your service profile, you will most likely get new (and therefore different) pwwn, nwwn for your vhba ! and this also requires additional zoning entry !

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/ts/guide/UCSTroubleshooting/UCSTroubleshooting_chapter_0110.html

https://community.cisco.com/t5/data-center-documents/troubleshooting-boot-from-san-installation/ta-p/3155048

[samtech]

Hi Walter

Thanks for your response. I have reconfigured zoning with new WWPN's and the initiators have also registered on SAN.

[Kirk J]

Are you planning on using the same exact storage lun for the cloned service profile?

If not, you will need to create an additional LUN, and follow the steps Walter already outlined, including LUN masking/permissions for the individual boot LUNs.  You generally do not want more than one set of initiators accessing a single boot LUN.

It would be helpful to understand what you are trying to accomplish with your 'clone'....

Thanks,

Kirk...

[samtech]

Okay.. this is what I've done

Deleted cloned profile.

Created a new profile using template (2HBA's and 1 NIC)

Boot order: 1st SAN and 2nd CD_ROM

Associated profile with the spare blade

Zone WWPN of HBA 1 with MDS-A and WWPN of HBA 2 with MDS-B (Both Initiators have registered within SAN)

Registered Initiators with server hostname and IP (which I am planning to provision to this blade)

Created new LUN 200GB

Created New Storage Group. Added both server and New LUN to this storage group (LUN MASKING)

However, when the server is booted it does not detect 200GB LUN. Therefore unable to find boot device.

Note: I have recently upgraded firmware to 2.2 8L. Don't want to confuse things but would this have anything to do with this?

[samtech]

I just had a look in BIOS (Boot Order) and it is showing the WWPN of target (First two). However it has "WWPN Target:000). Is this how it should appear?

Also, I am not sure what the bottom two are.

[Niko Nikas]

Hello,

I believe those are to represent the LUN mask (in this case it appears to be 0, so we are looking for the LUN masked as 0).

If you still have the server in a failed to boot state, can you run the below and provide the output?

connect adapter [chassis #]/[blade #]/1
connect
attach-fls
lunlist

*Edit (Saw this output on another thread in this discussion).

adapter 1/1/1 (fls):2# lunlist 13
vnic : 13 lifid: 3
- FLOGI State : flogi est (fc_id 0x270302)
- PLOGI Sessions
- WWNN 50:06:01:69:3e:e0:3e:9e WWPN 50:06:01:69:3e:e0:3e:9e fc_id 0x270600
- LUN's configured (SCSI Type, Version, Vendor, Serial No.)
LUN ID : 0x0000000000000000 (0x0, 0x4, DGC , FCN00131500079)
- REPORT LUNs Query Response
LUN ID : 0x0000000000000000
- WWNN 50:06:01:60:3e:e0:3e:9e WWPN 50:06:01:60:3e:e0:3e:9e fc_id 0x270500
- LUN's configured (SCSI Type, Version, Vendor, Serial No.)
LUN ID : 0x0000000000000000 (0x0, 0x4, DGC , FCN00131500079)
- REPORT LUNs Query Response
LUN ID : 0x0000000000000000
- Nameserver Query Response
- WWPN : 50:06:01:60:3e:e0:3e:9e
- WWPN : 50:06:01:69:3e:e0:3e:9e

This output looks good from what I can see, the section highlighted above tells me that from the server's perspective it can see the LUN.

What OS are you trying to install? Does the OS include the appropriate drivers for the adapter?

--

Niko

[samtech]

I am trying to install Server 2016. However upon booting from ISO, unable to see any LUN's\drives attached to install OS

[Walter Dey]

This document might be useful: https://cdn.cnetcontent.com/5a/1f/5a1f3f3e-d3a0-49c8-bbf9-88676f31ea2d.pdf

Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers Windows Installation Guide

First Published: April 22, 2011

Last Modified: March 20, 2015

Why are you using fcalias ? I would use device alias ?

[samtech]

Hi Walter

Thanks for helping me in this. However, I dont understand the difference between fcalias and device alias. fcalias is only referring to WWPN of the HBA. I will go through the steps in the pdf guide. Is there any difference in installing windows as compared to hypervisor? On a separate occasion earlier when I had installed ESXi, setup was able to detect the LUN unlike this time.

[Walter Dey]

Regarding device alias, see eg.

https://blog.scottlowe.org/2010/12/08/using-device-aliases-on-a-cisco-mds/

https://community.cisco.com/t5/storage-networking/fcalias-or-device-alias/td-p/1702249

https://community.cisco.com/t5/storage-networking/what-is-the-difference-between-quot-fcalias-quot-quot-device/td-p/1080710

[Walter Dey]

Zone WWPN of HBA 1 with MDS-A and WWPN of HBA 2 with MDS-B (Both Initiators have registered within SAN)

do you also have a zone with the vhba pwwn and the storage pwwn….

please provide the following information from both MDS

- show fcns database vsan xyz

- show flogi database vsan xyz

plus all the zone, zoneset information for this UCS vhba and the storage system.

[samtech]

Hi Walter

Please find attached output of both commands on MDS A & B

[Walter Dey]

Thanks !

Do you see the flogi ( pwwn ) of the vhba which should initiate the boot ? is the vhba in vsan 10 resp. 20 ?

And please show me the corresponding zone and zoneset.  

[samtech]

MDS A zone info

zone name VBT01-HBA0_VNX01-SPA0 vsan 10
fcalias name VNX01-SPA0 vsan 10
pwwn 50:06:01:60:3e:e0:3e:9e

fcalias name Veeam-HBA0 vsan 10
pwwn 20:10:00:25:b5:0a:00:ff

zone name VBT01-HBA0_VNX01-SPB1 vsan 10
fcalias name VNX01-SPB1 vsan 10
pwwn 50:06:01:69:3e:e0:3e:9e

fcalias name Veeam-HBA0 vsan 10
pwwn 20:10:00:25:b5:0a:00:ff

MDS B zone info

zone name VBT01-HBA1_VNX01-SPB0 vsan 20
fcalias name VNX01-SPB0 vsan 20
pwwn 50:06:01:68:3e:e0:3e:9e

fcalias name Veeam-HBA1 vsan 20
pwwn 20:10:00:25:b5:0b:00:8f

zone name VBT01-HBA1_VNX01-SPA1 vsan 20
fcalias name VNX01-SPA1 vsan 20
pwwn 50:06:01:61:3e:e0:3e:9e

fcalias name Veeam-HBA1 vsan 20
pwwn 20:10:00:25:b5:0b:00:8f

Where it says fcalias name Veeam, it used to be VBT01. But, had to delete that with old profile and then created alias with the new name and WWPN

Zoneset: MDS-A

zone name VBT01-HBA0_VNX01-SPA0 vsan 10
fcalias name VNX01-SPA0 vsan 10
pwwn 50:06:01:60:3e:e0:3e:9e

fcalias name Veeam-HBA0 vsan 10
pwwn 20:10:00:25:b5:0a:00:ff

zone name VBT01-HBA0_VNX01-SPB1 vsan 10
fcalias name VNX01-SPB1 vsan 10
pwwn 50:06:01:69:3e:e0:3e:9e

fcalias name Veeam-HBA0 vsan 10
pwwn 20:10:00:25:b5:0a:00:ff

Zoneset: MDS-B

zone name VBT01-HBA1_VNX01-SPB0 vsan 20
fcalias name VNX01-SPB0 vsan 20
pwwn 50:06:01:68:3e:e0:3e:9e

fcalias name Veeam-HBA1 vsan 20
pwwn 20:10:00:25:b5:0b:00:8f

zone name VBT01-HBA1_VNX01-SPA1 vsan 20
fcalias name VNX01-SPA1 vsan 20
pwwn 50:06:01:61:3e:e0:3e:9e

fcalias name Veeam-HBA1 vsan 20
pwwn 20:10:00:25:b5:0b:00:8f