Intel® Ethernet FCoE Boot

Intel® Ethernet FCoE Boot allows the user to install FCoE to boot an operating system from a remote target. The following information refers specifically to Intel® Ethernet FCoE Boot. To then configure the OS go to: Windows or Linux.

Booting from Targets Larger than 2TB

Upgrading Windows Drivers on an Intel® Ethernet FCoE-Booted System

Intel® Ethernet FCoE Boot Option ROM Setup

Microsoft* Windows* Setup for Intel® FCoE Boot

Installing Windows Server from a Remote Disk ("Diskless Install")

Installing Windows Server With Local Disk

UEFI Setup for Intel® FCoE Boot

BootUtility


Booting from Targets Larger than 2TB

You can connect and boot from a target LUN that is larger than 2 Terabytes with the following restrictions:

NOTE: The Crash Dump driver does not support target LUNs larger than 2TB.

Upgrading Windows Drivers on an Intel® Ethernet FCoE-Booted System

Upgrading an FCoE-booted system can only be done via the Intel® PROSet for Windows* Device Manager installer. A reboot is required to complete the upgrade. You cannot upgrade a port's Windows driver and software package if the port is in the path to the virtual memory paging file and is also part of a Microsoft Server 2012 NIC Team (LBFO Team). To complete the upgrade, remove the port from the LBFO team and restart the upgrade.

Warning: Do not update the base driver via the Windows Update method

Doing so may render the system inoperable, generating a blue screen. The FCoE Stack and base driver need to be matched. The FCoE stack may get out of sync with the base driver if the base driver is updated via Windows Update. 

Intel® Ethernet FCoE Boot Option ROM Setup

FCoE Port Selection Menu

To configure Intel® Ethernet FCoE Boot, power-on or reset the system and input the Ctrl-D key combination when the message "Press <Ctrl-D> to run setup..." is displayed. After inputting the Ctrl-D key combination, you will be taken to the Intel® Ethernet FCoE Boot Port Selection Setup Menu.

 

The first screen of the Intel® Ethernet FCoE Boot Setup Menu displays a list of Intel® FCoE Boot-capable adapters. For each adapter port, the associated SAN MAC address, PCI device ID, PCI bus/device/function location, and a field indicating FCoE Boot status is displayed. Up to 10 FCoE Boot-capable ports can be displayed within the Port Selection Menu. If there are more Intel® FCoE Boot-capable adapters, these are not listed in the setup menu.

Highlight the desired port and press Enter.

FCoE Boot Targets Configuration Menu

 

FCoE Boot Targets Configuration: Discover Targets is highlighted by default. If the Discover VLAN value displayed is not what you want, enter the correct value. Highlight Discover Targets and then press Enter to show targets associated with the Discover VLAN value. Under Target WWPN, if you know the desired WWPN you can manually enter it or press Enter to display a list of previously discovered targets.

FCoE Target Selection Menu

Highlight the desired Target from the list and press Enter.

Manually fill in the LUN and Boot Order values.

Boot Order valid values are 0-4, where 0 means no boot order or ignore the target. A 0 value also indicates that this port should not be used to connect to the target. Boot order values of 1-4 can only be assigned once to target(s) across all FCoE boot-enabled ports.

VLAN value is 0 by default. You may do a Discover Targets which will display a VLAN. If the VLAN displayed is not the one you require, enter the VLAN manually and then perform Discover Targets on that VLAN.

Hit Save.

NOTE: After the Discover Targets function is executed, the Option ROM will attempt to remain logged into the fabric until the FCoE Boot Targets Configuration Menu is exited. 
NOTE: For more detailed instructions and description of a typical installation and setup go here.

Intel® PROSet for Windows* Device Manager

Many of the functions of the Intel® Ethernet FCoE Boot Port Selection Setup Menu can also be configured or revised using Intel® PROSet for Windows Device Manager. Click here for instructions on installing and using Intel® PROSet for Windows Device Manager.

Microsoft* Windows* Setup for Intel® Ethernet FCoE Boot

Requirements

  1. Follow installation steps to install the Intel® Ethernet FCoE Boot-capable adapters with Intel® Ethernet FCoE Boot firmware support.

  2. Create a disk target (LUN) on an available Fibre Channel target. Configure this LUN to be accessible to the WWPN address of the initiator of the host being booted.

  3. Make sure the host system starts the Intel® Ethernet FCoE Boot firmware. The firmware should be configured properly, be able to connect to Fibre Channel target, and detect the boot disk.

  4. To setup a system to boot directly to an FCoE disk (aka "Diskless Install"), follow the steps in Installing Windows Server from a Remote Disk ("Diskless Install").
  5. To set up a Windows Server* boot system when a local disk is available, follow the steps in Installing Windows Server with Local Disk.

Installing Windows Server from a Remote Disk ("Diskless Install")

NOTE: This section only applies to Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and later.

After the Option ROM is installed, if you wish to install the Windows Server operating system directly to the FCoE disk, do the following:

  1. Locate the FCoE drivers in \APPS\FCOEBOOT\Winx64\Setup. You may copy all the files in the Setup directory to a floppy, CD/DVD or USB media.
  2. Boot the install media.
  3. Perform a Custom install and proceed to the “Where do you want to install Windows?” screen.
  4. Use Load Driver to load the FCoE drivers. Browse to the location you chose in Step 1 in this section and load the following two drivers in the specified order:
    1. Intel(R) Ethernet Setup Driver for FCoE.
    2. Intel(R) Ethernet Virtual Storage Miniport Driver for FCoE.

    Note: the FCoE drivers will block any other network traffic from the FCoE-supported ports until after Step 7 in this section. Do not attempt to install an NDIS miniport for any FCoE-supported ports Step 7 in this section.

  5. You should now see the FCoE disk or disks appear in the list of available install targets.  All disks accessible by this initiator through the boot port should appear.
  6. Select the FCoE disk configured for boot in the Option ROM and continue the install until Windows is installed and you are at the desktop.
  7. Follow the instructions for installing Windows Server and the FCoE stack. This will install the networking drivers and configure the FCoE drivers to work with the networking drivers. Note that you cannot deselect the FCoE feature.  You will be prompted to reboot at the end of the installation process.
  8. Windows may prompt you to reboot once again after it returns to the desktop.

Installing Windows Server with Local Disk

After the Option ROM is installed, if you wish to install Windows Server with local disk, do the following:

  1. Follow the instructions for installing Windows Server and the FCoE stack.

  2. Verify that the FCoE Boot disk is available in the Fabric View tab of Intel® PROSet for Windows Device Manager, and verify that you are online using Windows Disk Manager.
  3. Open a command prompt, run the fcoeprep.bat batch file.  To find the batch file, navigate to your architecture's directory within the \APPS\FCOEBOOT directory.
  4. Shut Windows down and capture the OS image to a local disk partition.
  5. Transfer the image from the local hard drive to the FCoE target.  This may be done from within the local Windows installation.
  6. For Windows 2008 R2 SP1 only: Run bcdboot.exe from the local Windows installation to make the FCoE disk bootable.
  7. Shut down and remove the local disk.
  8. Configure the system BIOS to boot from the FCoE disk and boot.
NOTE: For more detailed instructions and description of a typical installation and setup go here.

UEFI Setup for Intel® FCoE Boot

In order to perform an UEFI FCoE Boot using early build binaries, boot the platform into the UEFI shell and proceed as follows:

  1. Make sure the 10Gig UEFI UNDI driver is loaded. Check this using Drivers command. If the driver isn't loaded - softload the driver with load E#####x4.efi command.
  2. Load the UEFI FCoE Boot driver: fs0:\> load FcoeDxe.efi
  3. Launch FcoeConfig.efi application: fs0:\> FcoeConfig.efi

    Note: On UEFI 2.3.1 platforms it should be possible to configure FCoE Driver using firmware setup menu.

    Note: Once you complete the configuration it will be stored in systems firmware memory. Configuration will survive reboot.

    The following screen will appear, allowing per port configuration:

  4. After selecting a specific port, select Discover Targets and hit ENTER:


  5. If targets got discovered they can be configured by selecting a row in targets list and hitting ENTER:



  6. You can now either configure the values manually or select [Select from Discovered Targets] and hit ENTER:

  7. Select target from the list and hit ENTER:

  8. Appropriate values will be populated into target configuration fields. Set correct LUN number and Boot Order (1-4), select Save and hit ENTER:

  9. When targets are configured, hit [Save Targets] to save all targets configuration:

  10. When ports are configured, hit [Exit] to quit FcoeConfig application:

    Description: Machine generated alternative text: FCoE Port Selection

  11. Reboot the machine to UEFI –Shell
  12. Perform steps 1. and 2.
  13. FCoE Driver will print information about remote disk that is attempting to connect to:


  14. Execute command: fs0:\> connect –r
  15. Refresh the device mapping table: fs0:\> map –r

    Note: If FCoE Driver has connected to LUN successfully, relevant remote disk should be now mapped (blk0 device in above example).

    Note: If remote disk has FAT16/FAT32 formatted partition fsX entry will be also visible in device mapping table.


  16. If the OS was deployed on UEFI enabled system a FAT32 UEFI GPT partition should be available. Change directory to EFI\BOOT and run bootx64.efi: fsX:\> EFI\BOOT\bootx64.efi, where X is the GPT partition file system mapping number. 

The system will start booting.

 

Last modified on 8/21/12 8:50a Revision