Ignite and tagged VLANs not talking

[Steve Lewis]

When have some Integrity VM hosts, running multiple guests, with networking through Virtual Connect.

The VM hosts (physical blades) use tagged vlans, partly for security, presenting nics to the guests.  It was a nightmare getting it to work in the first place with hp-ux install off DVD, however Ignite is even worse.

The problem is we cannot boot/install the systems on subnet B (tagged vlan e.g. 222) from ignite server on subnet A (tagged vlan e.g. 111).  Both systems are connected to the same switch.

The Ignite manual talks about these briefly and mentions that an untagged inital UDP packet from a client may not reach a server on a different vlan.  The reverse may also be true.  We have IP helpers configured on the switch to convert a broadcast bootp packet to a directed one on the ignite server.  This didnt work, so we tried dbprofile and directed boot.

Sadly dbprofile does not support the addition of a vlan tag on a client (seems a bit of an oversight) so the initial query will hit the switch with the default vlan tag.  Our network consultant tells me that if any untagged packet is received it will have the tag added and then sent onwards.  He also said that the routing between these subnets is configured and it does work if you install off dvd and configure a nic with a tagged vlan it magically starts to send/receive traffic.  Its just the initial ignite boot/install which receives no packet - we checked that with tcpdump on the server.

Can anyone provide advice on this Ignite issue?  In particular I dont understand the Ignite manual talking about vlan routing, does it mean normal routing except with tag management?

HP support tell us that the ignite configuration is perfect and we can run a bootpquery successfully after installing and we can run an ignite make_net_recovery after installation.  We just cannot actually recover anything.