Boot to MSA2312i not working

[Rosspope]

Hardware
I have an HP MSA2312i SAN configured for iSCSI with 6 x 450GB hard drives.
I have multiple DL380 G6 servers that need to boot to the SAN.

Setup
I created my vdisk on the SAN, created a volume and explicitly assigned it to a host.
On the DL380 G6, I configured it to see the volume that is assigned to it on the SAN. During boot up it finds the SAN and connects to it without any problems.

When trying to install Windows 2008 R2 â I see my volume from the MSA SAN but I get this error.
Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computerâ s hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the diskâ s controller is enabled in the computerâ s BIOS menu.

When trying to install Windows 2008 NON-R2 â I donâ t even see the volume from the MSA SAN. Even after loading the correct drivers in the right order it still doesnâ t show up.

Screen shot 1 shows the server successfully connecting to the iSCSI SAN

Screen shot 2 shows the volume as offline when booting up with the Windows 2008 R2 disk

Screen shot 3 shows the volume as being online after enabling it through the windows screen

Screen shot 4 shows the error that it may not support booting to this disk

Screen shot 5 shows the error when I try to click Next anyways.

[Peter Mattei]

Do you have a Qlogig iSCSI HBA installed?

Looking at HP SPOCK on http://www.hp.com/storage/spock you will find that boot for the MSA2312i is only supported with the following iSCSI HBAs:
QLA4050c, QLA4052c, QLA4060c, QLA4062c and for blades the QMH4062.

Cheers
Pete

[Rosspope]

No I do not have the Qlogig iSCSI HBA installed.

I have talked to HP tech support on the phone and they have indicated that what I am trying to do with the NC382i is a supported configuration.

[Peter Mattei]

You are right! The NC382 seems to be supported.
The SPOCK document obviously states but does not limit to the iSCSI HBAs; sorry for that misunderstanding.

I searched HP.com and found this NC382 iSCSI boot guide:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01555874/c01555874.pdf
Did you follow the steps described here?
If yes there are also some troubleshooting tips.

Cheers
Pete

[Rosspope]

After updating the NIC firmware with Smart Update DVD version 9 I now have different issues.

The volume shows up but I can't format it or delete it.

See the attached PDF for more all the details.

If you can shine some light on this I would be a very very happy camper.

Thanks

[Peter Mattei]

I actually do not know what your problem is. :-(

Are you directly connected or via Ethernet switches?
If via switches try connecting directly to eliminate components See the HP StorageWorks 2000i G2 Modular Smart Array user guide (481598-002, June 2009 for reference.

Anyway if you are not succesful open a call at HP

Cheers
Pete

[Rosspope]

The sad part is I called HP half a dozen times now and nobody there wan't to help me. They are telling me that they don't help with configurations. They only support the hardware and tell me everything is working fine. Everything is definitely not working fine.

I have it running in an HP 24 port Gigabit ProCurve switch. If I were to connect it direct I would use a cross over cable right?

Also, when I configure my laptop with the iSCSI initiator I can connect no problem and see the volume and format it. But when I connect to it with the server after is still shows that it isn't formatted NTFS.

I suspect this is a Broadcom driver issue but HP tells me that if it would be a driver issue they would know about it already.

I am about 90% sure that I will not be purchasing anything else HP when it comes to this type of configuration or anything else really since their support is non-existent. I am truly disappointed.

[Uwe Zessin]

It looks like there is already data on the MSA volume. Can you go through the "Drive Options (advanced)" menue entry (on the right side) and try to delete the partition?

[Rosspope]

please refer to the PDF attached to the 5th post. It will show you the error that I am getting while trying to FORMAT or DELETE the volume/partition.

[Uwe Zessin · Accepted solution]

Missed the DELETE, sorry.

I've looked a bit around and it seems that other people have these problems with other (non-HP, non-iSCSI) arrays as well. Sometimes it helped to create a larger disk (>133GB), sometimes to use an even or odd number of GigaBytes.

[Rosspope]

I will try making it larger. I set it to 75GB but of course it shows up as 69.8GB

Thanks for the info. Will post an update when I see if it helped.

[Rosspope]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!

As soon as I deleted the volume and created a new one at 150GB it worked fine!

I don't know why HP couldn't have told me that before I spent over 20 hours trying to troubleshoot the issue.

[Rosspope]

I spoke too soon.

It allowed me to format it initially and move to the next step in the Windows installation but then it rebooted and restarted the installation. After loading the NIC drivers again I get the same error. It won't let me FORMAT or DELETE the volume/partition.

[Rosspope]

Ok it works now.

I re-created the volume on the MSA

I restarted the Windows 2008 install
It copied the installation files to the disk
It rebooted automatically

I had to change "Boot to iSCSI Target" to "Enable" and restart the server

Once that setting was changed it continued the installation of Windows 2008 Server.

[Martin Smoral]

I did notice in your pdf that you had all 4 MSA iscsi ports on the Same subnet. The proper setup for redundancy is to have Server Nic1/MSA Ports A1/B2 on one subnet and Server Nic2/MSA Ports A2/B1 on a differnet subnet.