Hi,

I have standalone hyper-V server 2012 R2 media for installation and a server which can be configured to boot from SCSI (No local HDD) from BIOS.

I have done the configuration for BIOS to boot from SCSI, I put the installation media for hyper-V and it starts loading but in the installation it is not able to detect the SCSI volume (HDD)..this is the problem.

I followed the same with win server 2008, it works fine. But with hyper-V it is not working....please give me a solution as what to do.

your virtual machine should be Generation2 for booting it from iscsi.

Hi,

In most cases it's because there is no drivers for your storage controller. You can add the driver during install process or inject a driver to your media.

Hi Darshana,

I am not in need to boot virtual machines from iscsi. I want to boot the host server (Hyper-V server) from Iscsi.

Like making it diskless.

And I am using HP bl460c G6 blades....they support ISCSI. I tested win server 2k8...it worked fine, but this hyper-V 2012 r2 does not.

I downloaded the NIC driver from HP and then at boot time used load drivers to load the drivers...but still it did not work.

Please let me know if there is a difference in the method of adding driver stated by you and the method which I am following.

If there is a difference, I will try your method also..

Thanks in advance.

Hi Joe,

In Server 2012 and 2012 R2, to boot form iSCSI you need 2 things:

1. Driver. You need to have a driver for the iSCSI NIC to be used during Server 2012 installation. You may have to mount the Windows installation CD/ISO, start the install, switch to mounting the driver ISO, load the driver, mount the install ISO again, before you can discover the boot LUN.. (or if you're really ambitious, slipstream your driver into your Windows installation CD..)

2. Your iSCSI target must present the the boot LUN as LUN 0. This is a Windows requirement. If the boot LUN is presented as LUN 1 or any other number, Windows won't boot.

One more caveat: 

You must disable multipathing during initial install. 

The problem is that if the boot LUN is presented to the initiator via 4 paths for example, Windows at boot time (from the installation CD media) does not have MPIO, and will see the boot LUN 4 times, gets confused, and fails to install the OS on the boot LUN.  

To work around this issue:

• Present your boot LUN via 1 path to the initiator (the server you're trying install WS2012 on),
• after OS installation, install MPIO,
• reboot,
• then present the boot LUN with multiple paths,
• and reboot again

Other options include:

Do a snap clone at the SAN level of another boot LUN (that has MPIO) to avoid messing with multipathing. The problem with that approach is that the resulting server will have the same SIDs as the clone source. Although you can automate renaming, changing IP, domain membership, even MAC changes at the Hyper-V switch, duplicate SID issues will come back to haunt you if the machine ever becomes a DC. So, I personally discourage this shortcut since it can cost you dearly down the road..

Hi joe,

Please refer to following article :

http://blogs.technet.com/b/storageserver/archive/2011/05/04/diskless-servers-can-boot-and-run-from-the-microsoft-iscsi-software-target-using-a-regular-network-card.aspx#_Boot_process

Best Regards

Elton Ji

Is there a step-by-step walkthrough to achieve this. I am guessing one would also need a PXE and a DHCP server for booting a Gen2 VM off a software iscs