Image capture slow on DL560

[JHealing]

Hello,

I am having problems capturing an Windows 2003 image on a DL560. It has no local drives and boots off a EMC SAN (using an Emulex LP9802 HBA). I am using the HP NC77XX boot driver and the imaging software does load. However we are only getting speeds of 5Mb/Min. The network ports on switch are set at 100/half and the protocol.ini in the boot disk image has been configured to the same settings. We have managed to image a bl20 blade after changing the port speed to 100/half.

Any ideas?

[Gordon Leonard]

You're on the right path.
I'm assuming your PXE booting. Try the "Universal Network Adapter driver" and see if you get the same issue. Don't do any modifications to the protocol.ini.

[JHealing]

To clarify the bl20 blade we successfully imaged had local disks. We are indeed pxe booting. We forced the speed settings to get away from any problems with the switch auto negotiating a slow port speed.

We originally used the UNA driver but had the same problem and hp suggested using a broadcom driver instead (bcm57xx netextreme).

[Gordon Leonard]

So when you did the local drives you were able to obtain a reasonable speed, regardless of the NIC driver? There are know issues with imaging from a SAN device, however; it was a pass/fail not slowness. You may be in the same boat.

[JHealing]

Another update. We have now isolated the issue down to Proliant DL560 servers. We can now image blades which have local and san boot disks.

However we cannot get any speed on the DL560 image with local or san boot disks. What's the correct nic driver to use with this server?

[Gordon Leonard]

Start with the "Intel Universal Network Adapter" basically don't select any NIC just click the check box at the bottom of the NIC selection window.

Since your having a problem with all your DL560 you may want to insure the NIC firmware is up todate.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=PSD_CN0234W

The DL560 has - Two NC7781 PCI-X Gigabit NICs (embedded)

[Ron Williams_3]

I just went thru the same thing today with a DL360, DL380 and DL580.

All of these servers use the same OEM Broadcom Extreme Network adapters. This is the NC77XX series for HP machines.

This seems to occur if you are using a switch (Cisco has the issue) that has the ports set to 100 Full. The Universal driver and the older Q57 drivers for the NC77XX cards initialize as 100/Half.

You can try the following:

1] Go into the PXE Configuration (CTRL-S) when prompted and set the NIC to 100 Full. Press "F4" to save. This should then work with the Universal Driver.

2] Download the latest NC77XX DOS driver from the HP website. When creating the PXE boot files, select have disk and point to the new driver. You then have to edit the protocol.ini file for the PXE initial and managed and force the driver to 100/full. Then you need to re-create the boot files again.

You can get the latest driver here:

http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/networking/us/download/20641.html

Here is a copy of the edited protocol.ini file:

[network.setup]
version=0x3110
netcard=Q57$_ini,1,Q57$_ini,1
transport=tcpip,TCPIP
lana0=Q57$_ini,1,tcpip

[Q57$_ini]
drivername=Q57$
LineSpeed=100 <--------- Set Link Speed
Duplex=Full <--------- Set duplex


[protman]
drivername=PROTMAN$
PRIORITY=MS$NDISHLP

[TCPIP]
NBSessions=6
DisableDHCP= 0
drivername=TCPIP$
BINDINGS=Q57$_ini
LANABASE=0

[pktdrv]
drivername=pktdrv$
BINDINGS=Q57$_ini
intvec=0x60
chainvec=0x66
novell=no