FCoE Boot Configuration Setup on Broadcom using Lifecycle Controller

If you are an IT administrator and manage your corporate data center with SANs, you may need to setup Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) boot for different network cards

Traditionally, the following is what you do to set up FCoE boot.

• Reboot server
• Press F2, browse to LegacyBootProto and select the correct value, which is FCoE, move to next attribute, such as ConnectFirstFCoETarget, and set its value to Enabled, then next attribute…, until the all attributes have been set to the correct values
• Then go to the next machine and repeat the procedure for each server you want to set up for FCoE boot

This traditional method is tedious, not automatic, error prone, and need physical access to the servers.  It soon becomes stressful repeating the same procedure many times for each server.  Besides, you don’t always have physical access.  You want automatically and programmatically way to avoid error.  Therefore, you always wonder if there is a better way.

The answer is yes.

The remote API exposed by Dell LifeCycle Controller capability of Dell’s 12^th generation servers provides the capability of remotely and programmatically set up FCoE boot.  The software is here to rescue and alleviate the pain and can easily get out all the mess helping you to programmatically, automatically, and remotely configure a network controller card for FCoE boot.

Dell has published a white paper FCoE Boot Configuration Setup on Broadcom using Lifecycle Controller

The white paper provides you with detail steps to set up FCoE boot for Broadcom card and boot to FCoE Target with WSMAN / winrm commands.

Here is a summary of the workflow to setup FCoE boot for Broadcom:

1. Fully Qualified device descriptor (FQDD) selection
2. Device enablement
3. FQDD check
4. NIC partition check
5. Link Status check
6. FCoE boot enablement check and configuration
   1. LegacyBootProto=FCoE
   2. ConnectFirstFCoETarget=Enabled
   3. FCoEOffloadMode=Enabled
   4. FCoETgtBoot=Enabled
   5. VirtWWPN=your WWPN address
   6. FirstFCoEWWPNTarget=your FirstFCoEWWPNTarget address
   7. FirstFCoEBootTargetLUN=your FirstFCoEBootTargetLUN value
7. Boot order check

Using WSMAN/winrm command and following the steps in the white paper, FCoE boot on Broadcom card can be setup.

See the full article in this whitepaper:

 FCoE Boot Configuration Setup on Broadcom using Lifecycle Controller

iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller Technical Learning Series, Lifecycle Controller Home : iDRAC7 Home