Intel® iSCSI Remote Boot Intel X540-T2

Xylex

1/9/24, 8:33 AM

I have an Intel X540-T2 Dual port 10GB Ethernet adapter. DEV ID: 8086/1528

I am trying to setup a workstation to boot from a SAN using iSCSI.

Everything I have read about this card says that Intel® iSCSI Remote Boot is supported. Yet, I cannot enable it, nor configure it using any of the boot utilities I have found, including the DOS utility or the BOOTUTILW64E.EXE command line utility that Intel released just last year.

If I perform the command:

BOOTUTILW64E.EXE -NIC=2 -BOOTENABLE=ISCSIPRIMARY

I get the following error:

ERROR: Invalid argument for command line parameter -BOOTENABLE: ISCSIPRIMARY 
Select value from 'iscsiprimary', 'iscsisecondary','pxe', 'fcoe', or 'disabled'

If I do pxe instead of iscsiprimary, it works. foce gives me the same error. The only options that work are PXE and DISABLE. It appears that my card does not have the correct image flashed to it to support Intel® iSCSI Remote Boot. However, Intel's site and documentation leads a person on a wild goose-chase more of than Cisco's website.

Has anyone set Intel® iSCSI Remote Boot up before? Am I just missing something simple?

For extra clarity, here is the output of BOOTUTILW64E.EXE -E

Port Network Address Location Series  WOL Flash Firmware                Version
==== =============== ======== ======= === ============================= =======
1   B06EBF3A4213     0:31.6 Gigabit N/A FLASH Not Present
2   A0369F21EACC   179:00.0 10GbE   N/A UEFI,PXE Enabled              2.2.02
3   A0369F21EACE   179:00.1 10GbE   N/A UEFI,PXE Enabled              2.2.02

I have been considering flashing iPXE to this card, but I want to get the stock firmware working before I go the nuke-all solution, plus I don't know if that would even work, or if I could go back if I did, and it failed.

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Score:1

Server

Tomek

1/12/24, 7:28 PM

The NIC is flashed with only legacy PXE and UEFI option roms, this is why you cannot configure iSCSI.

To use iSCSI you must reflash your NIC with at least iSCSI option ROM. You may be able to flash it together with UEFI option ROM (on Intel branded and other brands OEM Gen designs) or with so called "combo" image which also contains legacy PXE and possibly - legacy FCoE - on certain server brands (likely Dell and HP).

Please note that legacy FCoE is end of life. Legacy iSCSI is also heading this way (if not EOL already - it is not available in release 27.8). And I have a motherboard which only supports CSM (legacy BIOS compatibility mode) only with add on graphic card (which obviously must support legacy video option rom), so legacy iSCSI is a no-go on such design.

You will be better off with UEFI iSCSI - if your BIOS is UEFI and has iSCSI initiator embedded. The crash dump driver supports this scenario.

EDIT: Flashing iPXE should work for this NIC (it WILL NOT be possible on anything newer than that, X540 and I210 were the LAST Intel NICs to allow flashing unsigned option ROM images). It should also be possible to flash back Intel option roms.

Disclosure: I work for Intel and used to maintain legacy networking option ROMs.

+ 3

Xylex

1/18/24, 1:25 PM

Thank you very much for that. Now, IF I can actually manage to find the UEFI and iSCSI ROM for this card, I think I'll be set. For the record, my board is an Asus x299 TUF Mark II. It supports UEFI, but not Legacy. Which explains why I cant even get the option rom to boot during post.

Tomek

1/19/24, 9:02 AM

You should be able to find UEFI drivers on Intel's website, they are supported and they should still work on this NIC. UEFI iSCSI initiator should be a part of the motherboard UEFI BIOS. If it is not there - no Intel driver is going to help you.

Tomek

1/19/24, 9:06 AM

Just head for "Intel® Ethernet Adapter Complete Driver Pack", unzip and go to APPS direcotry. Grab BootIMG.FLB file and one of the executables (for your platform) from the subdirectory and you should be good to flash your NIC. The one for UEFI is probably what you should get, boot to UEFI shell (you may have to disable secure boot) and flash.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Intel® iSCSI Remote Boot Intel X540-T2

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