User Manual

Rev 2.0-3.0.0
Mellanox Technologies
205
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 > Software > InfiniBand/VPI Drivers).
The binary code is exported by the device as an expansion ROM image.
A.1.1 Tested Platforms
See the Mellanox FlexBoot Release Notes (FlexBoot_release_notes.txt).
A.1.2 FlexBoot in Mellanox OFED
The FlexBoot package is provided as a tarball (.tgz extension) containing the files specified in
Appendix A.1.1, “Tested Platforms” page 205.
1. A PXE ROM image file for each of the supported Mellanox network adapter devices. Specif-
ically, the following images are included:
ConnectX / ConnectX-2 / ConnectX-3 images:
• ConnectX_FlexBoot_<PCI Device ID>_ROM-<version>.mrom
where the number after the "ConnectX_FlexBoot" prefix indicates the corresponding PCI Device
ID of the ConnectX / ConnectX-2 / ConnectX-3 device.
2. Additional documents under docs/dhcp:
A.2 Burning the Expansion ROM Image
A.2.1 Burning the Image on ConnectX® / ConnectX®-2 / ConnectX®-3
This section is valid for ConnectX® / ConnectX®-2 devices with firmware versions
2.8.0600 or later and ConnectX®-3 firmware.