DL380 G6 with Broadcom apaters iSCSI boot from LeftHand P4300 SAN problem

[Jian Guo]

Hi all,

We are trying to use a DL380 G6 with Broadcom NC382i network adapters iSCSI boot from our LeftHand P4300 SAN.

We followed "HP Broadcom iSCSI Boot for NC382x Adapters User Guide" from this link:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?contentType=SupportManual〈=en&cc=us&docIndexId=64179&taskId=101&prodTypeId=329290&prodSeriesId=3811492

But when we got to the Windows 2008 R2 setup screen, we loaded the drivers as told, the iSCSI disk just did not show up. We tried various versions of drivers and also Windows 2008, 2003. All did not work out.

Then we tried to migrate a windows image to the iSCSI target, we could see the windows startup scroll bar, but it showed up a blue screen at the end.

We managed to put a WinPE image on the iSCSI target and boot into WinPE successfully.

There is a part in the user guide talking about "ProLiant Accelerated iSCSI Pack License". We are wondering if this is necessary for what we are doing, but did not get any positive confirmation from HP customer support or sales guys.

We have been struggling with this problem for weeks. So any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

[ITMarcus]

We have the same Problem


....no answer from HP

[Daniel Bowers]

I don't know how to resolve your problem, but you don't need the Accelerated iSCSI Pack to get iSCSI boot to work.

The Accelerated iSCSI Pack just enables a performance-enhancing "iSCSI offload" feature. It is not necessary for iSCSI functionality in general, or for iSCSI boot.

[Jian Guo]

Our problem has not been solved yet.

But we heard something from LeftHand technical support, according to them, they do not support "boot from SAN on the Broadcom ISCSI adapter".

And "there are some known issues with Broadcom cards which make boot-from-SAN a dangerous idea. It's certainly not on the supported list."

According to LeftHand compatibility list, Broadcom indeed is not included.
www.hp.com/go/P4000Compatibility

To Daniel,
Thanks for the tip. You are right on this. Actually our DL380 G6 Broadcom adapters come with that license.

Thanks, folks, if you have any updates, please let me know.

[Rosspope]

Hi Jian,

Any luck with this? We are having the same problem. Only way I was able to get Windows 2008 R2 installed was to use the offloaded method but once installed it just keeps rebooting all the time. It looks like it's loading windows and then reboots.