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Re: Advice sought after boot from SAN failure following HBA replacement

 
zeroagemain
Frequent Advisor

Advice sought after boot from SAN failure following HBA replacement

Hi,
We have some legacy HP BL20p G3 servers that were setup as Boot from SAN (IBM SAN) with Windows Server 2003 32-bit and a dual port Qlogic QLA2312 HBA.

The HBA in one of these servers appears to have broken, but when we swap it out for a spare HBA (same model) the server can see the boot LUN, but soon after displaying the Windows splash screen it reboots, and cycles like this endlessly.

The replacement HBA has been enabled for boot from SAN (HBA BIOS enabled, selectable boot device set etc) and I see no issues there. The HBA BIOS and firmware levels are the same on the replacement HBA as they were for original (thanks to a HP Firmware Maintenance CD upgrade) so I can't understand what's wrong.

I suspect from other threads and general googling that I need to re-install the OS based QLogic driver so that the HBA and OS drivers re-sync, but (a) I don't understand why and (b) I don't know how, given that I can't boot into the OS.

Any suggestions? Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Brett
6 REPLIES 6
WFHC-WI
Honored Contributor

Re: Advice sought after boot from SAN failure following HBA replacement

Hi Brett,

Can you boot into safe mode or maybe boot from the Windows CD and use the recovery console to inject the driver?
AnthonySN
Respected Contributor

Re: Advice sought after boot from SAN failure following HBA replacement

>>hba card changed
was the wwn no changed in the CV?
The Brit
Honored Contributor

Re: Advice sought after boot from SAN failure following HBA replacement

Brett,
Are you using Virtual Connect profile with HP-assigned WWIDs ??

If not, can you actually see the LUNs from the Server/iLO ?? If the HBA has changed, then the WWIDs will have changed. I am not familiar with your type of environment, however SAN storage is normally presented to a WWID, if they change then the storage presentation has to change.

HTH

Dave.
WFHC-WI
Honored Contributor

Re: Advice sought after boot from SAN failure following HBA replacement

After thinking a little more on this I had to ask myself, if the card is the same model why would the drivers be inaccurate? They are stored on the same, unchanged LUN that was being accessed before the hardware failure.

Also, if the WWN was not properly zoned, would we ever make it to the Windows splash screen? I'm skeptical because I don't think the login would ever occur.

Can you verify that only one HBA is set as the boot device and all boot BIOS settings (topology, PLOGI timeouts, etc) are set identical to the original HBA?
zeroagemain
Frequent Advisor

Re: Advice sought after boot from SAN failure following HBA replacement

Thanks for your replies so far.

SASJ - I can confirm that the WWN's have changed but the SAN zoning has been updated to reflect this, and the server can see the LUN it boots from

The Brit - This is a P-Class so alas no Virtual Connect, it is just a direct patch from the P-Class enclosure

WFH-WI - I have to confess I haven't tried a repair with the Windows CD. I'm leaving it as a last resort because I want to understand why it's not working first and that seems a bit of a brute force fix, and if it still fails I won't know if I've made it worse (i.e. overwritten current QLogic driver). I didn't set these servers up and don't know a lot about them, nor SAN booting, so I don't really want to blindly try anything but I will if it comes to it obviously.

I can verify that all the BIOS settings are the same & only one HBA is set as boot device.

Could you clarify what you mean by "i don't think login would occur"? I'm fairly new to this, and based on answers to other similar question on QLogics forum I think it is something to do with handover from HBA firmware driver to OS driver but I can't get anyone to elaborate on that so far. I'll keep trying, and try a Windows repair if not.

Help so far much appreciated.

Brett
WFHC-WI
Honored Contributor

Re: Advice sought after boot from SAN failure following HBA replacement

The login is just the WWN connection to the fiber switch, it dictates which LUNs can be seen. It looks like you already handled that part of things through zoning.

I'm not aware of any authentication between the card itself and the driver it uses to access an OS. If a driver reinstall is needed then we're in the same boat on your original question (a) ... I don't understand why!

If you get an answer from Qlogic's site please follow up on this post... and we appreciate the points if you appreciate the answers! :)