Working on ISCSI Boot . So far no luck. Please share if someone has successfully accomplished this through ipxe sanboot.

I've gone to a point where it boots from iscsi mounted drive and after like 10-20 seconds of loading windows it crashes with BSOD sometimes with inaccessible boot device and sometimes misconfigured boot data etc sort of error code. I'm following whats available online .

• tiny pxe server
• wimboot
• wimboot.ipxe

wimboot.ipxe

!ipxe

ifconf net0
set gateway 0.0.0.0
set keep-san 1
set initiator-iqn iqn.2003-12.org.board:proteus-jiga.jiga.chick.chick

sanhook --drive 0x80 iscsi:10.1.100.13::::iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:dcvstorj01-win10install-target

sanboot --no-describe --drive 0x80 iscsi:10.1.100.13::::iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:dcvstorj01-win10install-target

set boot-url http://${dhcp-server}

kernel ${boot-url}/wimboot

initrd ${boot-url}/BOOTMGR BOOTMGR

initrd ${boot-url}/BOOT/BCD BCD

initrd ${boot-url}/BOOT/BOOT.SDI BOOT.SDI

initrd ${boot-url}/SOURCES/BOOT.WIM BOOT.WIM

boot

Hashed out entries were used to boot into boot.wim and install windows on iscsi drive. I had to mount boot.wim to a separate machine and add ATOMIC PI drivers and iscsi drivers so that it takes those devices in WINPE environment. it successfully installs windows and everything but it won't boot from iscsi drive even though I change the parameters to sanboot with --no-describe switch and all that stuff.

please share your thoughts.

I think the issue lies in somewhere between Secureboot and Windows Kernel not being able to talk to ISCSI drive. Windows NTFS partition has all drivers and ipxe connects to san drive but it just won't boot. ISCSI target is setup on win 2016 server.

any kind of help will be highly appreciated.

Thanks
Asim

Hello, I had a similar issue.
My resolution was that I needed to have network drivers installed on my Windows image, and the Microsoft iSCSI initiator needed to be running, with the correct initiator IQN on the Configuration tab of the iSCSI Initiator Properties window, and the volume auto-configured by clicking the auto-configure button in the Volumes and Devices tab.

Once I did this and reimaged my iSCSI target with the reconfigured Windows image, Windows was able to boot.

It seems that iSCSI boot occurs in two stage, the BIOS stage and the OS stage, and both have to be configured correctly. Your BIOS appears to be configured correctly, which is why Windows attempts to boot, but then fails during the boot process when a different initiator IQN is presented to your iSCSI target during the OS stage.

Hope this is helpful.

Edit: I also disabled the page file in Virtual Memory settings, as I read that this can cause problems.