Brocade 8GB HBAs not logging into Brocade 8/12 switch on c3000

[mwg]

I am installing a c3000 with BL460C G7 blades with the Brocade 8GB HBAs and a Brocade 8/12 SAN switch. According to the onboard administrator, everything is fine with the blades. Operating system is ESXi 5.0. 

I have tried updating the firmware on both the blades and the SAN switch, but still haven't been able to get the HBAs to log into the fabric. I've tried explicitly assigning a license to the port and also just letting DPOD assign the license without any luck. I tried setting the switch ports explicitly to 8 GB, but I haven't tried it at 4 GB yet (I will do that next week).

Any other things I could try here? Am I missing a gotcha from the blade end of things? 

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hey, the OS needs to be booted for the HBAs to log on to the fabric.

Shouldn't be any other gotchas (unless you have virtual connect stuff).

"According to the onboard administrator, everything is fine with the blades." -> Can you see the WWN of the HBAs?
When the blade boots, can you see the HBA then?

What state is the port in on the SAN-switch? G_Port? If so, fixing the port speed and disable/enable the port is usually a good thing to try.

[mwg]

Thanks. The OS is definitely up, and I've tried rescanning and rebooting. I can see the HBA when it's booting. No virtual connect.

I'll try fixing the port speed and disabling/enabling the ports.

Ironically the SAN appears to have a hardware issue as well, but it's logging in just fine.

[Steven Clementi]

Can you see the HBA's on the Configuration tab in your vClient/vCenter when you click on Storage Adaptors?

If you want to see if they can log in without the OS... reboot and go into the BIOS of the adaptor, enable boot from SAN.  This will allow the adaptor to log into your SAN Switches without an Operating System.

[mwg]

Thanks! Very nice tip. I haven't had a chance to try this yet (I'm waiting on an unresolved hardware issue), but I will definitely give this a try.