Configuring server boot options on 14th generation Dell EMC PowerEdge servers This technical white paper describes the options available from PowerEdge BIOS to manage and control boot sources such as hard drives, solid-state drives (SSDs), PXE servers, and HTTP network shares for both legacy BIOS and UEFI mode. June 2018 Authors Mark Shutt, Member Technical Staff (Dell EMC Server BIOS Engineering) Price Tsai, Sr. Principal Engineer (Dell EMC Server BIOS Engineering) Paul Rubin, Sr.
Revisions Date Description June 2018 Initial release The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. Copyright © 2018 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
Contents Revisions.............................................................................................................................................................................2 Executive summary.............................................................................................................................................................4 1 Introduction ...............................................................................................................................
Executive summary The BIOS for the 14th generation of Dell EMC PowerEdge servers supports a wide-range of sources for bootstrapping Operating Systems (OSs), hypervisors, diagnostic programs, and other executable programs. While the industry continues the transition from legacy BIOS to the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), PowerEdge BIOS provides server administrators with manual and programmable methods for discovering, ordering, and enabling boot sources.
1 Introduction Over the lifetime of a server, evolving uses may necessitate changes in the operating software or the source of the operating software for server bootstrap. Variances in IT operational processes can also impact the form of server boot – USB drives, PXE boot of network stored images, UEFI HTTP boot, and SAN boot are a few of the possible options in addition to booting from server local hard drive storage.
2 Understanding PowerEdge boot mode The 14th generation of Dell EMC PowerEdge servers supports both legacy BIOS mode and Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) mode. Legacy BIOS boot mode is used to boot older OSs or diagnostic software that do not follow the UEFI standard—UEFI boot mode is used for booting newer UEFI-aware software. Note that the term “BIOS” is often used to refer to the server firmware that initializes the hardware and loads the OS, regardless of the current Boot Mode.
2.2 Boot mode BIOS settings The BIOS Boot Mode can be set by using a number of interfaces: BIOS User Interface, RACADM command line interface (CLI), iDRAC WS-Man, iDRAC RESTful application programming interfaces, and also an iDRAC Server Configuration Profile (SCP) file. Throughout this technical white paper, examples are provided by using the BIOS user interface and RACADM CLI.
Selecting legacy boot mode by using RACADM 8 Configuring server boot options on 14th generation Dell EMC PowerEdge servers
3 Boot Sequence The PowerEdge BIOS creates and maintains a list of boot options. In legacy BIOS boot mode, each boot option refers to a bootable legacy device found on the system. In the UEFI boot mode, each boot option refers to a bootable UEFI device or a specific UEFI image file on a boot device. In either boot mode, the boot list is retained across server reboots.
The most common way for a boot entry for a fixed disk drive such as a PERC RAID controller virtual drive to be added is by the OS. During the OS installation process, the OS adds an entry for itself and places it first in the boot sequence. If an OS has not been installed, it is still possible to have a UEFI boot entry. A boot entry for a fixed disk will be added if the file efi\boot\bootx64.efi exists on a FAT filesystem. 3.2.
When enabled, a “Generic USB” entry will be placed in the UEFI Boot Sequence. When BIOS is iterating through the boot sequence and detects this option, it will attempt to boot the first external or iDRAC virtual USB device in the UEFI Boot Sequence. By default, the USB Boot placeholder feature is disabled and can be changed with the following BIOS Attribute. It is available only in UEFI Boot Mode. Generic USB Boot settings Attribute Possible Values 3.
the required boot device and use the ‘+’ key to move the selected device up (earlier) or the ‘-‘ key (later) in the Boot Sequence. Using a programmatic interface such as RACADM, the UefiBootSeq attribute will contain a comma-delimited list of boot entries in Fully-Qualified Device Descriptor (FQDD) format. To change the Boot Sequence, get the current attribute value, rearrange the list with the desired sequence, and then set the attribute to update the Boot Sequence.
3.5.2 SetBootOrderFqddN A more flexible means to programmatically set the boot order is provided by the use of the SetBootOrderFqddN attributes, where N is 1‒16. Note that these attributes are not available from the BIOS User Interface. SetBootOrderFqddN settings Programmatic Name Attribute SetBootOrderFqdd1 – SetBootOrderFqdd16 Possible Values A comma-delimited list of the boot devices using programmatic names.
2. Enable PXE boot, set boot sequence, and then apply job by rebooting the server: C:\Users\Administrator>racadm jobqueue create BIOS.Setup.1-1 -r pwrcycle -s TIME_NOW RAC1024: Successfully scheduled a job. Verify the job status using "racadm jobqueue view -i JID_xxxxx" command.
4 Summary The BIOS for the 14th generation of Dell EMC PowerEdge servers supports a wide-range of sources for bootstrapping Operating Systems (OSs), hypervisors, diagnostic programs, and other executable programs. While the industry continues the transition from legacy BIOS to the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), PowerEdge BIOS provides server administrators with manual and programmable methods for discovering, ordering, and enabling boot sources.
5 Additional Information 16 For more information on iDRAC9 and 14G BIOS, visit the BIOS section of the iDRAC9 white paper library on Dell Techcenter http://delltechcenter.com/idrac Details on using the RACADM command line interface are available from http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/systems-management/w/wiki/3205.racadm-command-lineinterface-for-drac The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is documented here http://www.uefi.
