BL460c Gen 9 650FLB UEFI PXE VLAN Issues with 2015.06 SPP

By | July 14, 2015

In a previous post, I mentioned that I was having some problems applying the 2015.06 SPP and in particular I had problems with PXE booting. Applying the SPP hasn’t been as much of a problem, but as I dug into PXE booting it got strange. The main reason I wanted to test 2015.06 was that UEFI PXE with VLAN was implemented. After updating to 2015.06, this feature still does not work and exhibited even stranger behavior.

After updating to 2015.06, there are extra boot options in the RBSU->Network Options -> VLAN Configuration

Set the VLAN Control to Enabled and set the VLAN ID as needed.

I also went into Network Boot Options to change the boot mode to use IPv4

After saving and rebooting, press F-12 to PXE

At this moment I run into issues.

First-off, it tried to boot from IPv6 even though I specified IPv4 in the network options. It does get to IPv4 eventually but then but then nothing.

On the original host that I tried this with, it tries to boot from IPv6 from the second nic and then just hangs. I tried to disable the second nic to force it to the first, but then it will just skip past PXE altogether. I also see in the Virtual Connect that the server port is going from available to unavailable at times.

At first I thought that this was because I had not updated Virtual Connect, so in a test enclosure I updated Virtual Connect to 4.41 and re-tested. Same behavior as before. I also tested the legacy boot with VLAN and without as well as UEFi with no VLAN (all successful). So it’s only uefi with VLAN that has issues.

Putting that aside for the moment, I also have FEX  (B22HP) interconnects in my c7000 enclosures. I had never gotten around to testing the Gen 9 with PXE (legacy or uefi), so I figured this was as good a time as any. After completing my tests, the Gen 9 did not PXE boot with any mode with any firmware version while connected to the FEX. I have cases open with HP for both issues, so we’ll see what happens.

Update 8-21-2015: My two cases didn’t really get me anywhere, but I was able to work a contact that I made to get back in tough with engineering. They were able to reproduce the issue and are working on a solution.

4 thoughts on “BL460c Gen 9 650FLB UEFI PXE VLAN Issues with 2015.06 SPP

  1. Stefan de Vries

    I have similar issues. One server is dead after applying 2015.06 SPP, case opened at HP. Another server is extremely slow in booting and NIC is not showing up in system utilities anymore. Did you get any further with this?

    Reply
  2. Chris Post author

    Hi Stefan, the issue I am working on with HP currently is specific to the PXE VLAN options. I have had mixed success deploying this SPP (just getting it deployed, not the aftermath) so I am skipping this release.

    Reply
  3. mark

    This isn’t so much related to the SPP or G9 blades, but covers my experience getting PXE to work over a VLAN using Flex10’s and Virtual Connect.

    We received an additional (used) C7000, with 2 G7 and 2 G8 blades. These were able to be loaded, over VLAN 1, using Microsoft WDS and PXE, with no problem.

    My current production C7000 could not use WDS and PXE.

    I then took the blade I was trying to install, from my production C7000 and put it in the new C7000. Using the BIOS, I reset it to “factory defaults” and wiped the internal hard drive (BIOS > System Default Options > Restore Default System Settings). I verified that the NC553i was listed as a boot device (BIOS > Standard Boot Order).

    Call this server Bay8. In comparing the differences between the settings I was using in Bay8 and the new blades that were able to use WDS, I used Virtual Connect to change Bay8’s networks on LOM1a and LOM2a to be a single network, using VLAN 1, which uplinks to my Juniper switches, at 10Gbps. Normally, LOM1a and LOM2a carry “multiple networks”, using VLAN1 and VLAN2. For the purpose of getting WDS and PXE to work, I selected the specific network (VLAN1), instead of “Multiple Networks”.

    I also set PXE Boot to “Enabled” (not use BIOS).

    My normal settings for anything in the production C7000 are to set LOM1a and LOM2a to be multiple networks (VLAN 1 and VLAN 2). This may be why I was having problems…

    I then went into the Emulex PXESelect Utility (boot the blade and hit the space bar, after the message to hit F9 for setup or F11 for boot menu). Then, when prompted, hit ^P to enter the PXESelect Utility. Here, I disabled “Advanced Mode Support”, set the “Personality” to NIC, then “Save”, followed by “Continue”. I selected the first port, of controller #0 and hit “Enter”. I selected “PXE Boot Support” “Enabled”.

    I selected “Configure PXE VLAN ID/Priority”. I disabled “PXE VLAN Support” and selected “Save” (strange but true…).

    I then hit until I was prompted “Do you want to exit from the utility [Y/N]? and hit “Y”.

    After that, the blade was able to use WDS to do a BOOTP, over VLAN 1.

    I then moved the blade back to the production C7000 and repeated the WDS BOOTP full install, from scratch, to make sure the blade worked properly in the old C7000. This also worked.

    So the problem may have been related to the fact that my normal VC settings, for LOM1a and LOM2a, are “Multiple Networks”…

    Reply
    1. Chris Post author

      Did you try using ‘multiple networks’ and then define the pxe vlan id in the pxe select menu? Basically what it sounds like was that you were trunking vlans but possibly weren’t setting the pxe vlan id. Then you switched to not trunking

      Reply

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