As this is an upgrade, the cluster nodes are ready to go. The previous build report is here.
NIC Flash Update & iSCSI boot enable
The next step is the firmware flash update of the Intel PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Server Adapter from version 2.7.56 to 2.7.137, which is the most recent version at the time of writing this.
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 16.8
- Insert the USB stick
- Start UnetBootin
- Select the FreeDOS image and install it to the USB stick
- Copy the Bootutil executable + 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 screenshot shows the old firmware op top, then the command to update and some followup questions.
The bottom side shows the updated versions.
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 reusing my existing QNAP configuration to provide three targets and associated mapped LUN id’s. The instructions are here.