HP ILO2 virtual media speed

[Kalle Pihelgas]

Booting from virtual media in ilo2 is very slow for me? ILO version 1.43. Can i do something to speed it up or do i have to wait fix from HP.

[Jimmy Vance]

Booting from virtual media is slow and there really isn't anything that can be done to speed it up

[Kalle Pihelgas]

ILO version 1 is much more faster with virtual media. How come ILO2 is so slow?

[Timur S Lukovkin]

This is normal Kalle...by design ILO 2 is so slow...I've the same concern...

[4rachnid]

ILO firmware version 1.5 fixes this issue. I had the same problem myself and have tested the new firmware successfully.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=1842750&prodNameId=3288156&swEnvOID=1005&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-fd5994ac8bfc4f4384bb6befe0

[Admin: above link is no longer valid, please visit HPE Support Center for firmware information]

[dagwieers]

On a HP BL460c G6 with iLO2 v2.07 (17/08/2011) and System ROM I24 (14/01/2010) I can tell from the Apache logs that we get at best 2x 120kB per sec (240kB/sec), but in most cases we don't get more than 4x 16kB per sec (64kB/sec). For a typical 34MB RHEL6 boot image it means between 3 and 8 minutes boot-time.

From the same logs we also see there is some variety in block sizes (chuncks) that are requested from the Apache server using a HTTP range header. It is unclear to what is causing the irregular block sizes.

The ISO images are provided from the same network as the iLO2 directly through HTTP. So we don't use the java Virtual Media applet.

The blade's iLO link speed is set to Automatic, when forced to 100Mbps FD, it automatically jumps back to Automatic. (Even though 100Mbps FD is marked in bold, which seems to indicate that it is the recommended settings). If Automatic means Auto-negotiated, this may be the cause of the low speed and irregular block sizes (as auto-negotiate could mean 100Mbps HD), however we were told that the iLO link is internal to the enclosure and cannot be configured from the Enclosure itself, leaving out any possibility to influence the link speed configuration.

Feedback welcome.

[dagwieers]

Ok, after updating using the latest firmware DVD (v10.10), the speed increased to 12x 64kB per sec (768kB/sec) which makes a very big improvement in boot speed (in this particular case x12). This is close to the USBv1 limit so I don't think we can expect a large improvement over this speed.

iLO2 firmware was updated as part of the firmware DVD, now at v2.09 (11/04/2012), and the System ROM was updated to I24 (05/05/2011). Yes, this one is also called I24 ?!?