topic Re: Windows 2008x64 on BL495c - Boot from SAN in BladeSystem - General

Windows 2008x64 on BL495c - Boot from SAN

Adrian Clint — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:34:55 GMT

Anyone got this working?
Using Qlogic firmware 1.26 and latest Blade,ILO & OA firmware thru Virtual Connect.

We put in the disk and it tries to boot as its supposed to and we get a error as shown in the attachment. Does the same on more than one blade.

Servers have 16GB memory so going to check 4GB next.

Re: Windows 2008x64 on BL495c - Boot from SAN

Ken Henault — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:42:40 GMT

Run Diagnostics to see if you have some bad memory.

Re: Windows 2008x64 on BL495c - Boot from SAN

Adrian Clint — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:07:33 GMT

Tried 3 different servers and one of these servers we tried 3 different sets of memory, 32GB 16GB and 4GB swoping them around.

Sometimes the error message changes. We dont get the NMI errors but still get the same halt message.

Re: Windows 2008x64 on BL495c - Boot from SAN

Ken Henault — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:10:55 GMT

Could it be bad media? How are you trying to install? RDP? Virtual Media? USB DVD on the SUV cable?

Re: Windows 2008x64 on BL495c - Boot from SAN

Terri Harris — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:02:38 GMT

"We put in the disk". Is this a local disk?

1. Even if you have no local disk, change the boot order back to default. Will the blade POST normal until it gets to the expected "no OS found"?

2. Have you disabled the integrated SATA controller? Is the QLogic the first device in the boot order (F9 RBSU)?

3. In the Onboard Administrator, I assume the QLogic pWWNs are showing virtual addresses?

4. What if anything have you configured in the Virtual Connect FC SAN Setup - boot parameters?

5. If you access the QLogic BIOS during POST (Ctrl-Q), does it see any LUNs? Does it report the expected 50:06:0b.xx virtual addressing?

Minimum fw revs needed: iLo 1.70, OA 2.32, and Virtual Connect fw 1.34 or 2.01

Otherwise, what is the SAN Switch & switch fw/FOS connecting to the VC-FC modules, and what kind of SAN is it (EVA, EMC. etc)?

Re: Windows 2008x64 on BL495c - Boot from SAN

Adrian Clint — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:36:03 GMT

Yes, I should have been more specific when I said disk ... I meant 2008x64 DVD.

Anyway the result was the same either by DVD or RDP scripted install (but osdist was from same DVD. So I will see if I can get hold of another 64bit DVD Thursday)

I've been out at a customers today... but many of Terri's suggestions were tried before I posted and someone was still working on it.

HP's suggestions in order were.....
Turn AMD VT in the bios to be the opposite.
Turn Memory (DRAM?) prefetching to be the opposite
Put SATA controller as lowest priority.

We also tried adding the supported Qlogic driver for the EVA, rather than use the one on the DVD

No luck....

But the last suggestion was to remove the NC325m NIC card. (Not sure if this came from HP or Microsoft)
This worked....!
But putting the card back.....failed again.

I'll try updating the Broadcom NIC driver and look any any NIC firmware updates thurs.

Case No if interested. 1604045096

Re: Windows 2008x64 on BL495c - Boot from SAN

Timur S Lukovkin — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:05:15 GMT

Have you tried to install windows 2003 instead of 2008?

Re: Windows 2008x64 on BL495c - Boot from SAN

Adrian Clint — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:37:51 GMT

Current status on this one is that it all works ok with a NC326m 2 port card. But the moment I plug in a NC325m 4 port card it will not boot and I get:
*** Hardware Malfunction
Call your Hardware Vendor for Support
*** The system has halted

Has anyone got a BL495c with Windows 2008x64 with a NC325m running?
or anyone got a BL495c with Windows 2008x64 with a NC364 and boot from SAN running?

Re: Windows 2008x64 on BL495c - Boot from SAN

Adrian Clint — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:02:28 GMT

Update: Tried it with an NC364m. Works ok.

Looks like there is an issue with the NC325m