OBDR on LC2000 NetServer

[Stuart Browne]

I have been able to get this to work successfully, however I have a few minor issues of which I'm unable to get around.

Unfortunately, to do this (given my tests) it's not really 'One Button', as it requires the power-on to get the tape into OBDR mode, then into the bios to change the BOOT order of devices, followed by a BIOS save, power cycle again into OBDR mode.. in order to boot!

It of course works after this until a power-cycle without the wonderful OBDR!

Changing the boot order prior to going into OBDR mode doesn't stay after a reboot into OBDR mode.

So basically, I was wondering:

Is this fixed in a more recent version of the BIOS for this serires of machine? (I don't have another of this series to test)

or Am I doing something terribly wrong as to have to go through all this pain in the first place?

[Marino Meloni_1]

hi
I didn't know your configuration, but OBDR use a cd-rom emulation to boot from the tape, so as usualy the cd-rom is priotary respect of the hdd, I didn't understant what you have to change in the boot priority to enable OOBDR .
bye
marino

[Stuart Browne]

Ok, let me try to explain a little bit better. Yes I am aware that the OBDR makes the tape drive 'appear' to be a CD-ROM, and this is where my issue lies.

Without changing anything, the 'Boot Device Priority' stands as such:

CD-ROM
FLOPPY
HARD DISK
NETWORK BOOT
SYMBIOS ..

Now, when powering on holding the tape drive's button in (as per OBDR instructions), the lights flash in the appropriate manner. The SCSI controller assigns some physical aspects to the tape drive (so it appears to be seen as a CD), and then the machine proceeded to boot off the RAID controller.

Going into the BIOS whilst in this mode, moving the 'SYMBIOS' (it does change it's description, but I didn't write it down unfortunately) above 'HARD DISK', and it would successfully boot off the tape. However, after booting without OBDR, the SYMBIOS entry would drop to the bottom of the list again, thus making it impossible to boot off the tape again until going back into the BIOS and re-ordering the 'boot device priority'.

(HP NetRAID 1si installed, tape at ID3 on channel 0).

[Marino Meloni_1]

hi
have a look at this note, may be it aply to your case (see last bios version)


ISSUE: When the HP SureStore DAT drive is in One-Button Disaster Recovery (OBDR) mode, the computer boots off the computer's hard disk drive instead of the HP SureStore DAT drive.

SOLUTION: Be sure the SCSI BIOS is the most recent. Check with the hardware manufacturer for any upgrades. Also, make sure that the option for "Boot from Removable Media" is enabled

http://www.hp.com/cgi-bin/cposupport/swindex.pl?p=hpnetserve19399&l=en&c=BIOS

bye

marino

[Stuart Browne]

The latter I knew, and yes it is enabled.

The former is what I'm asking (whether the newer releases of BIOS images do fix this issue).

Doing things like testing this is costly, both in time, and to the users. The less I have to re-boot to do this sort of stuff the better.

And no, the machine isn't running Windows (so don't go down that path).