HP BL460c Boot from EVA 5000 Notes
Booting from SAN isn’t really anything special these days, but it’s still not the easiest thing in the world to do. Of course, having older storage hardware as your boot source can complicate things. So, here’s some notes and guidance developed in my environment to successfully get HP BL460c blades booting from a Generation 1 EVA 5000.
Disclaimer: Not every, exact, specific step you have to perform is listed here. It’s assumed that you’ve fully read the HP Booting from SAN document listed below. Furthermore, it’s assumed that you’re familiar with installing all of the HBA firmware, drivers and other software listed here. If you have existing knowledge of working with BL460c blades, Emulex LPe1105-HP HBAs and EVA 5000 storage systems, then you should be OK. Your mileage may very. Always keep your local HP support team engaged in changes in your environment.
Applicable documents:
- HP StorageWorks Booting Windows Server 2003 and Windows Serverx64 Edition systems from a storage area network application notes
- Rapid Deployment Pack: How To Perform a Boot From SAN Installation (not used in this procedure though, discussed below)
Equipment list:
- HP c7000 blade system chassis
- Brocade 4/24 4GB FC switches for c-Class blade system
- HP BL460c servers
- Emulex LPe1105-HP 4GB dual-port HBAs
- EVA 5000 with HSV110 controllers (Generation one)
- (Optional) Other FC switches upstream of c-Class chassis, commonly the case when you add the c-Class chassis into an existing EVA environment
- Fabric environment that includes two independent zones, A and B or 1 and 2, or something such similar
Software list:
- Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 64-bit (could use 32-bit as well, but not Windows Server 2008 as it is not supported in Active/Passive controller mode with VCS 3.x code on the EVA 5000)
- Most current versions of firmware, drivers and management software for the LPe1105-HP HBA.
- Start here to obtain these software items
- Emulex HBAnyware management software (v 3.3a14 as of this post)
- HP branded firmware for the LPe1105-HP (v 2.72a2 as of this post)
- HP branded multi-boot firmware for the LPe1105-HP (v 6.00a5 as of this post)
- HP StorPort driver for LPe1105-HP (v 7-2.00a12 as of this post)
- MPIO Basic package from HP (v 1.2 as of this post)
- LP6DUTIL command line HBA maintenance utility (found in v 2.70a5 of firmware)
- Microsoft StorPort hotfix for HP systems (currently MS KB 946448 as far as I know)
So, the basic process goes like this:
- Create and enable a single zone that includes HBA port #1 and a single EVA controller port on Fabric A.
- Boot to a DOS prompt and use the the LP6DUTIL to update the multi-boot code on the LPe1105-HP HBAs. See below for more information on creating a bootable USB key.
- On the BL460c, enter the RBSU (ROM Based Setup Utility) and move HBAs up to #1 and #2 in boot order list. Disable the on board E200i adapter from PC device list.
- Reboot the BL460c and enter Emulex BIOS.
- Enable the BIOS on HBA port #1.
- Set HBA port #1 fabric topology to “Fabric Point to Point” by choosing option 4 from the menu and then selection option 4 again (see Image 1 and 2 below).
- Set HBA port #1 “Start Unit Command” to enabled, which is only needed on Generation 1 EVAs, by choosing Option 8 from the menu.
- Create the server object in Command View.
- Create a boot from SAN LUN in Command View.
- Assign the new LUN to the server in Command View.
- Configure boot options on HBA (1 port with 1 path), follow the directions in the HP document.
- Send the Boot from SAN specific RDP job to server (this is a modified standard job with one change to “Distribute Disk Image” part (see Image 3 below).
- Complete Windows configuration using standard guidelines.
- Install all HBA items in this order:
- HBAnyware
- HBA firmware via HBAnyware
- HP StorPort driver
- Reboot
- Microsoft StorPort hotfix
- Reboot
- MPIO Basic
- Reboot
- HBAnyware (yes, again, it gets uninstalled when you install the HP StorPort driver for whatever reason)
- Change first zone to include both EVA controller ports on Fabric A.
- Add the second HBA port to Boot from SAN LUN in EVA Command View.
- Add the second zone with both EVA controller ports and HBA port #2 in Fabric B.
- Reboot, enter Emulex BIOS again.
- Add second boot path to HBA port #1 (this would be other EVA controller in Fabric A).
- Enable the BIOS on HBA port #2 and add both boot paths to it.
- Make sure that both HBAs are setup in the same order (i.e. Primary to Controller B, Secondary to controller A…see what controller “owns” the BoS volume in Command View).
- Set HBA port #2 fabric topology to “Fabric Point to Point”.
- Set HBA port #2 “Start Unit Command” to enabled (only needed on Gen 1 EVA).
- Reboot the server.
- Complete monitoring application configuration.
- Complete application software installation and configuration.
Image 1: The Configure This Adapter’s Parameters menu
Image 2: Configuring the fabric topology type
Image 3: Changes made to Distribute Disk Image step in RDP installation job
Making this change to the RDP job was a suggestion of an HP support engineer who’s done quite a few Boot from SAN installations using RDP. Furthermore, he also stated there was no reason to perform the actions outlined in RDP KB article 127 if you’re following along step for step with the Boot from SAN document listed above.
You can create a bootable USB key by downloading and using the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool (v2.1.8), which is pretty hard to find. Download it from a Chinese language HP page here. Just click the button to the right of the file name. You’ll also need the Windows 98 or Me media to make your boot disk.
Image 4: The HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
Run the utility and be sure to select Create a DOS startup disk and you’ll have a formatted, bootable, USB key in no time. Place your LP6DUTIL file and your multi-boot code file (.PRG) on the USB key and you’re good to go on that.
Booting BL460c blades from an EVA 5000…did this help?
Followup: HP C-Class Blade Enclosure Advisory (c01519680)
As a follow-up my earlier post about advisory c01519680 for HP C-Class Blade Enclosures, I wanted to provide some more identifying information that I just noticed on the advisory site, but not on the main advisory information page. When examining your existing power supplies, and especially when examining the replacement units that HP will send you, be sure to take into account all three of these items, any ONE of them identifies that power supply as being good for use per HP:
- The power supply has a revision of “W” or greater, or
- The power supply was manufactured after March 20, 2008, or
- The power supply has an ECO label 10057837 affixed to it.
You can see the first two points in this image (borrowed blatently from the HP advisory page found here).
The third point is illustrated in this image.
Do not be surprised if the “good” replacement units that you get from HP to replace your “bad” power supplies have revision numbers and manufacturing dates that indicate they should be replaced…as well as using the date code method I outlined in the previous post. Per HP (several times) as long as that ECO 10057837 label is on the power supply, then you’re supposed to use it for replacement as it has been reworked.
I suggest that if you find yourself in this situation that you print out a hard copy of all pages of the advisory and keep it in your change control log. I’d also print or save the advisory pages to PDF or MHT for archiving online as well.
HP C-Class Blade Enclosure Advisory (c01519680)
If you’ve got HP C-Class Blade System enclosure in your organization, hopefully by now you’ve read advisory c01519680 and taken the required steps. In short, the advisory states:
HP has identified a potential, yet extremely rare issue with HP BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure 2250W Hot-Plug Power Supplies manufactured prior to March 20, 2008. This issue is extremely rare; however, if it does occur, the power supply may fail and this may result in the unplanned shutdown of the enclosure, despite redundancy, and the enclosure may become inoperable.
So…that’s not so good seeing that a single failed power supply (out of six installed in the enclosure) could take down the entire enclosure!
If you’ve downloaded and tried to run the Windows version of the tool to identify power supplies the advisory pertains to…have you actually gotten it work? We tried on three different PCs (Windows XP SP2, Windows XP3 and Windows Vista Enterprise SP1), following all directions and couldn’t get any output at all. So…I decided to take a look at the Unix version of the tool. Since all files in Unix are text files, it wasn’t too hard to figure out what the criteria were for replacement (other than having a date code on the power supply of before March 20, 2008.
Without going into too much detail, the tools (whether on Windows or Unix) use the data from several command that run in the Onboard Administrator (OA) CLI. The basic sequence the tool follows to tell you which power supplies are in need of replacement goes like this:
- Log into the OA for each enclosure listed in the input file.
- Collect information (power supply number, power supply version, power supply serial number) for each power supply
- Examine that information.
- Use a sequence of logical comparisons to determine which power supplies are in need of replacement as outlined.
- If less than three fields of information are returned for each power supply, INVESTIGATE is returned.
- If the power supply version is greater than or equal to 2, OK is returned.
- If the power supply serial number is not equal to 14 characters in length, REPLACE is returned. Note I’ve never seen one less than 14 characters, but obviously they’re out there and they’re really old!
- (This is the good part) If the last five characters of the supply serial number (which is the week code, although I haven’t found the pattern for this yet) is less than VV000 then REPLACE is returned.
So…all you have to do is collect the three pieces of information from each power supply and find those that have a week code (the last five digits of the serial number) less than VV000. Easy.
So, if you too cannot get the Windows tool to work correctly (despite being at OA firmware version 2.25 and following all of the very simple directions completely), you can still get your power supplies replaced easily enough. You can get the serial number information you need from the OA either from the CLI or the GUI. I show examples of both power. The CLI requires the usage of the show enclosure powersupply all command. The GUI displays the information under Power and Thermal > Power Subsystem.
I created a simple Excel spreadsheet (get it at the end of this post) that will take the power supply serial number input and tell you which power supplies need to be replaced. One note to consider, it’s almost a certainty that all power supplies in a chassis will need to be replaced if one of them does…unless you’ve purchased them over time or previously replaced one due to a failure. So expect to be ordering replacements (free) in groups of six.
One last thing I noticed during the ordering phase, to get the new replacement power supplies, was that HP’s web form actually tells you which power supplies are authorized for replacement or not…so you could actually even skip using the Excel spreadsheet if you wanted and just paste your serial numbers into the order form…
So…if you’ve HP C-Class enclosures…check those power supplies right away!
Get the Excel file here:
HP_C7000_Power_Supply_Inventory_Public.zip (6.9 KiB, 1,568 hits)
Useful HP Links
I ran across a couple of HP sites in the past week that are very useful.
HP PartSurfer (http://partsurfer.hp.com/cgi-bin/spi/main) - Makes finding HP part numbers for your HP products much simpler. Very useful for looking up replacement parts or part numbers for entitlement checks.
HP c-Class Blade System Documentation (http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/316682-0-0-0-121.html) - A nice “one-stop” location for product information and downloads for the HP c-Class Blade System.
-
Translator
