[Info-vax] Integrity rx2800 i2 trying to boot from MSA2050

[Tom Wade]

Hi,

Hoping to hear from anyone who has got an rx2800 i2 booting from an MSA 
SAN using 16 Gb/s fiber HBAs.  I am trying to clone a system disk from 
another rx2800 booting from an EVA SAN.

Hardware Details.

HP Integrity rx2800 i2 1.60GHz/6.0MB 8 CPU
B9F24AR Fiber HBA
MSA-2050 SAN

Software
VSI OpenVMS 8.4-2L1.
Update 1.0 installed.
Unclustered.

---
OpenVMS installed on internal SCSI drive from VSI DVD OK.
When booted from the internal drive, VMS can see the SAN $1$DGA disks, 
and perform I/O to them.

I restored an /IMAGE saveset of the source machine (same hardware type 
and O/S version) onto one of the fiber disks.  I then added a boot entry 
using SYS$MANAGER:BOOT_OPTIONS.COM for this disk and added it to position 1.

efi$bcfg: $1$dga3021: (Boot000A) Option successfully added
efi$bcfg: $1$dga3021: (Boot000B) Option successfully added

Option 2 (List) shows

Entry  Description                                                Options
-----  ----------------------------------------------------------

-------------
    1   OpenVMS 8.4 on SAN $1$DGA3021 FGA0.2070-00C0-FF52-E296
          $1$DGA3021 PCI(0|a|0|0) Fibre(207000C0FF52E296,LunF000000000000)
    2   OpenVMS 8.4 on SAN $1$DGA3021 FGA0.2470-00C0-FF52-E296
          $1$DGA3021 PCI(0|a|0|0) Fibre(247000C0FF52E296,LunF000000000000)
    3   OpenVMS on DKA0: PKA0.0
          DKA0 PCI(0|1|0|0) Scsi(Pun0,Lun0)

When I try to boot from the SAN device, I get

Booting OpenVMS 8.4 SAN disk $1$DGA3021 FGA0.2470-00C0-FF52-E296
Boot Failed. OpenVMS 8.4 SAN disk $1$DGA3021 FGA0.2470-00C0-FF52-E296
Booting OpenVMS 8.4 SAN disk $1$DGA3021 FGA0.2070-00C0-FF52-E296
Boot Failed. OpenVMS 8.4 SAN disk $1$DGA3021 FGA0.2070-00C0-FF52-E296

I originally tried it with the unpatched DVD installed operating system.

When that failed, I removed the boot entries, applied Update 1.0 to VMS 
on the internal SCSI drive, rebooted (from the internal drive), and 
re-added the SAN boot options.  I did this because of information 
contained in a PDF document on the DVD, which suggested Update 1.0 was 
required.  A link to the document on the VSI web site is

https://docs.vmssoftware.com/docs/ENABLING_16GB_FC_HBAS_FOR_BOOT.pdf

This made no difference.

I then did an /IMAGE copy of the patched SCSI system disk onto another 
SAN drive, created new boot entries for this, and attempted to boot from 
that drive.  I did this to make sure the version of OpenVMS on the SAN 
was fully patched to Update 1.0.

Again, the same boot failure.

The document describes booting into the EFI shell and the device 
manager, which I also did.  The EFI shell was unable to see any file 
systems on fiber SAN:

 > EFI Shell list (fs entries)
 >
 >   fs0    :Removable HardDisk - Alias hd9a0b blk0
 >           PcieRoot(0x30304352)/Pci(0x1,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Scsi

(0x0,0x0)/HD(1,GPT,291986A1-20CC-11EE-A1D6-AA000400FEFF)
 >   fs1    :Removable HardDisk - Alias hd9a0d blk1
 >           PcieRoot(0x30304352)/Pci(0x1,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Scsi

(0x0,0x0)/HD(3,GPT,291986A0-20CC-11EE-A1D7-AA000400FEFF)
 >
 > VMS_SHOW EFI output
 >
 > fs0:\> \EFI\VMS\VMS_SHOW
 >
 >   Searching    6 NET Device entries...
 >   Searching    7 UEFI Device entries...
 >   Searching   66 PCI Device entries...
 >   Searching   65 VMS Device entries...
 >
 > VMS: DKA0        EFI: fs0       Vol: V8_4_2L1   DevInfo: HP      LOGICAL

VOLUME  6.64
 > fs0:\>

No files found on fs1:

The Device Manager was also unable to see the SAN adapters
Device Manager output
/--------------------------------------------------------------------------

----\
|                               Device Manager

    |
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------

----/

Devices List                                          Configure the iSCSI
   iSCSI Configuration                                 parameters.
   Emulex 10G NIC: Bus:Dev:Func 09:0:0 -
   E4:11:5B:62:80:8A
   Emulex 10G NIC: Bus:Dev:Func 09:0:1 -
   E4:11:5B:62:80:8C

The various scenarios described in the document refer to i4 or i6 
servers (this server is an i2).  The only scenario mentioned using i2 
servers, was an example ("Use Case 2") whereby the customer was 
attempting to replace i2 servers by i4 or i6.  The inference from this 
is either that i2 servers don't need any such special steps, or that i2 
servers cannot boot from an MSA 2050 SAN using an B9F24AR  HBA.

Customer opened a support call, and apparently the i2 is compatible, but 
since the HBA can't be seen from the EFI environment, it must be a 
hardware fault, despite the fact that once booted, VMS can see the drives.

Any suggestions/experiences/comments gratefully received.

---
Tom Wade
OpenVMS Consultant and Enthusiast
tom dot wade at tomwade dot eu