Booting from Read-only USB (DL360 G6)

[Chris S White]

Are there any known issues with booting a DL360 G6 from a read-only USB stick?

I have a Imation USB stick (8GB, Swivel) which has a physical read-only/read-write switch on it. The stick has VMWare ESXi image installed on it.

When the switch is set to r/w, the DL360 boots without problem, but when i set the switch to r/o, the BIOs skips over the USB device in the boot sequence (almost as if the stick has no suitable boot partition).

I can use the stick in r/o mode in my desktop without problems, so this looks a BIOs problem.

Any advice or known issues with this approach?

[Joseph L. Casale]

Absolutely an issue, ESXi needs to mount the USB rw as it flushes it's config routinely and at shutdown.

[Chris S White]

Granted if you want stateful server, but this doesn't explain why it boots fine on my desktop (stateless - all config changes are lost at reboot).

So the question still stands - a firmware problem?