Now that the node is assembled and hardware ready, it’s time to do some first configuration stuff such as flash update all firmwares, set the correct BIOS parameters and provide the NIC with the correct iSCSI settings to boot from the NAS.
The BIO
S will auto-detect the CPU and memory, no need to manually change these settings.
As you can see here, the correct Core i3-2100T CPU is shown and the correct amount of memory. The BIOS version is not up-to-date, I have 0041 and the most recent version is 0053 (topline of the screen)
Fetch the most recent DQ67EP firmware from the Intel site and place it on an USB stick. Reboot and on the Intel bootscreen press F7, this puts the board into firmware update mode. It will detect the USB stick, select the correct firmware file and you can update as shown in the pictures (without having an OS!)
Bios settings
<screenshots .. need to tidy up the BIOS settings section here> For now make sure you do the following and leave the rest to their default settings:
- I’ve disabled all unused devices in the BIOS, such as audio, serial, etc.
- Removed unused boot devices.
- System power options: After power failure –> last state
- Active Processor Cores –> All
- Intel Hyper-Threading Technology –> Enable
- Execute Disable Bit –> Enable
- Intel Virtualization Technology –> Enable
- Boot to Network –> Enable (this affects both the onboard NIC as well as dual-nic card)
- Under Boot Display Options: On Screen Options: Expansion Card Text –> Enable (otherwise you don’t get the CTRL-D boot menu to change iSCSI stuff)
NIC Flash Update & iSCSI boot enable
The next step requires a bit more work and that’s the firmware flash update of the NIC’s, both the onboard or as Intel calls it LOM which stands for LAN On Motherboard as well as the dual-NIC card.
You need an empty USB stick, UnetBootin (link) , a FreeDOS image (link) , the updated NIC firmware (link) from the Intel site (incl. Bootutil and the BootIMG.flb).
- Unzip the NIC firmware. This creates a folder called Intel 16.3
- Insert the USB stick
- Start UnetBootin
- Select the FreeDOS image and install it to the USB stick
- Copy the Bootutil + BootIMG.flb to the USB stick
Boot the node from the USB stick.
- Check the imageversion with: Bootutil -IV
- Enumarate the NIC’s with: Bootutil -E
I will be using the bottom NIC of the dual-nic card as my connection to the storage network. This is the interface that will need the iSCSI boot LUN information. In this case, the adapter is NIC#2.
To be able to boot from this NIC, we need to change the primary setting to iSCSI for this NIC. Because the I’ve provided the latest BootIMG.flb on the stick it will use this and flash the existing NIC’s to the latest version.
Bootutil -up=iSCSI -nic=2
The top of the screen shows the existing NIC’s in a flash unknown state which is default out-of-the-box state. The top NIC is the onboard as designated by “LOM”.
After the bootutil command you see on the bottom side of the screen the same NIC’s. Now with the iSCSI boot enabled and a reported flash version.
note: Eventhough the Intel site claims it can be done, I could not configure the LOM to change from PXE to iSCSI. The command just fails.
iSCSI node configuration
Hopefully you are familiar with iSCSI and setting up initiators and targets. If not, there are some great tutorials out there 😉
I’ve prepared my QNAP to provide three targets and associated mapped LUN id’s. I’ve kept these thin provisioned at 50Gb a piece. Way oversized for Hyper-V Server 2008R2 but hey, it’s thin provisioning so it’s frrrrreee.
Boot the node and when the NIC firmware version shows and the line press CTRL-D .. go and press CTRL-D. This shows the following screen identifying the dual-nic interfaces you’ve flashed for iSCSI. In my case, I’ve set the top line as primary as this is the bottom interface on the card which I’ll be using for the storage network.
Entering
the correct iSCSI information for my environment. As you can see, I’ve entered the 12-network and the targetname of ttgbootn1 which I’ve defined on the NAS. I’ve created a single target with a single mapped LUN so the boot id=0.
Save and reboot.
Unfortunately, after booting, the following screen showed. WTF?!
ERROR: iSCSI target can not take any more connections
This can not be right as I do not have set any limitations (yet). After a bit of digging it’s just an incorrect error message stating that the target name is not complete. Appearently you can’t use the target alias on Intel’s iSCSI boot feature!
After supplying the full targetname as you can see in the screenshot , everything is peachy!
wh00h00, a mounted iSCSI LUN on the NAS.
The next post describes the installation process of Hyper-V Server 2008R2 to the LUN for the cluster node.