User Manual

Rev 2.1-1.0.6
Mellanox Technologies
223
Appendix A: Mellanox FlexBoot
A.1 Overview
Mellanox FlexBoot is a multiprotocol remote boot technology. FlexBoot supports remote Boot
over InfiniBand (BoIB) and over Ethernet.
Using Mellanox Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) technologies available in ConnectX® adapt-
ers, FlexBoot gives IT Managers’ the choice to boot from a remote storage target (iSCSI target)
or a LAN target (Ethernet Remote Boot Server) using a single ROM image on Mellanox Con-
nectX products.
FlexBoot is based on the open source project iPXE available at
http://www.ipxe.org.
FlexBoot first initializes the adapter device, senses the port protocol – Ethernet or InfiniBand,
and brings up the port. Then it connects to a DHCP server to obtain its assigned IP address and
network parameters, and also to obtain the source location of the kernel/OS to boot from. The
DHCP server instructs FlexBoot to access the kernel/OS through a TFTP server, an iSCSI target,
or some other service.
For an InfiniBand port, Mellanox FlexBoot implements a network driver with IP over IB acting
as the transport layer. IP over IB is part of the Mellanox OFED for Linux software package (see
www.mellanox.com > Products > InfiniBand/VPI SW/Drivers ).
The binary code is exported by the device as an expansion ROM image.
A.2 FlexBoot Package
The FlexBoot package is provided as a tarball (.tgz extension). Uncompress it using the com-
mand “tar zxf <package file name>”. The tarball contains PXE binary files (with the *.mrom
extension) for the supported adapter devices. See the release notes file FlexBoot-
<flexboot_version>_release_notes.txt for details. The package includes the following files:
• dhcpd.conf – sample DHCP configuration file
• dhcp.patch – patch file for DHCP v3.1.3
A.3 Burning the Expansion ROM Image
A.3.1 Burning the Image on ConnectX®-2 / ConnectX®-3
Prerequisites
1. Expansion ROM Image
The expansion ROM images are provided as part of the Mellanox FlexBoot package and are listed in
the release notes file
FlexBoot-<flexboot_version>_release_notes.txt.
2. Firmware Burning Tools
This section is valid for ConnectX®-2 devices with firmware versions 2.9.1000 or
later and ConnectX®-3 firmware versions 2.30.3000 or later.