BladeSystem - General
1748134 Members
3652 Online
108758 Solutions
New Discussion юеВ

Re: BL460c G6 WDS Build Issues

 
Ben187
New Member

BL460c G6 WDS Build Issues

We have a problem with the new BL460 G6 blades and building them via our WDS infrastructure. The machine boot to WinPE, connects to the WDS server and start the process perfectly. However the OS file copy never finishes, so the process doesnтАЩt continue. Using the command line you can look inside the download directory, and sometimes its done 5mb, other times 100mb, it never the same. But it never finishes.

I'm perfectly happy to accept that this is a driver issue, however I have tried every driver I can find with always the same result.

Has anyone else ever had these issues?

Cheers

Ben
4 REPLIES 4
Prokopets
Respected Contributor

Re: BL460c G6 WDS Build Issues

I'm not sure but once, when i got something like this:
====
"and sometimes its done 5mb, other times 100mb, it never the same. But it never finishes. "
====
it was a memory issue. Try to test it with something like memtest.
Ben187
New Member

Re: BL460c G6 WDS Build Issues

Thanks for the response, but its happening on all our BL460 G6's, (4 of them) But I'll run a memory test on it to test it out...

Further to what I put in the first post, during the winpe session if you set up a continuous ping to either the WDS server, or even the local gateway, then at the point when the files stop copying the pings fail. I've installed wireshark on the wds server and can clearly see the point it fails as it sends 3 re-transmits after failing to receive an ACK, then gives up. From that point on you have no network connectivity until you reboot.

I'm pulling my hair out with this one. The G5's build perfectly, and I've never seen anything like this before. I've totally stripped the WinPE drivers back to be only the NIC and the SATA drivers and it still fails.

Anyone else seen this?
BillR_1
New Member

Re: BL460c G6 WDS Build Issues

We are having similar issues. We have our own build process based on Windows PE. It starts out fine, but as soon as it starts trying to copy the windows install files the nics stop functioning. The problem is looking like bad drivers.
Ben187
New Member

Re: BL460c G6 WDS Build Issues

I've done a lot more digging on this and it certainly does look like bad drivers. When the files stop copying if you have a persistent ping to the server / gateway then this will start not responding. If however you have both NIC's enabled on the switch with valid IP addresses the pings recover after a couple of failures. So it looks like the driver for whatever reason initialises the second NIC and tries to continue to file copy. But of course by the time the 2nd NIC comes online the file copy has failed and it won├в t re-try.

I have tried disabling the 2nd NIC in the BIOS, but this doesn├в t help, as I think the way the blades work the 2nd NIC isn├в t truly disabled. You can├в t disable the primary NIC either without both NIC's not working. So that whole train of thought didn├в t work.

What I have found out though is that the x64 windows 2008 drivers work perfectly, for 64bit installs, including for building 2003 x64 machines. We don├в t have 32bit in our environment here, but I'm guessing the same would be true for the 2008 x86 drivers. So all I do is boot using the customised .wim image using the 2008 drivers, but then select to install 2003 (we use WDS / Deployment Toolkit)

I called HP regards this and according to them the WinPE drivers are supplied as is, with no support for them. So unless they update them soon I'm sticking with the 2008 drivers!

Ben