Mellanox Technologies

Mellanox FlexBoot Release Notes
===============================
Rev 3.3.420, October 2011

Contents:
---------
1. General
2. Supported Adapters
3. Supported Firmware and Firmware Tools
4. Tested Platforms
5. Package Contents
6. Changes From Previous versions
7. Known Issues


1. General
----------
These are the release notes for "Mellanox FlexBoot", the software
for Boot over Mellanox Technologies adapter devices supporting VPI. FlexBoot
enables booting kernels or operating systems (OS) from remote servers in
compliance with the PXE specification.
This package is based on the open source project iPXE available at
http://www.ipxe.org.

2. Supported Adapters
---------------------
The package supports the following ConnectX® family Network Adapter 
devices and cards.
Specifically, adapter products responding to the following PCI Device IDs are
supported:

ConnectX, ConnectX-2 and ConnectX-3
- Decimal 25408  (Hexadecimal: 6340) 
- Decimal 25418  (Hexadecimal: 634a)
- Decimal 25448  (Hexadecimal: 6368)
- Decimal 26418  (Hexadecimal: 6732)
- Decimal 26428  (Hexadecimal: 673c)
- Decimal 26438  (Hexadecimal: 6746)
- Decimal 26448  (Hexadecimal: 6750) 
- Decimal 25458  (Hexadecimal: 6372)
- Decimal 26458  (Hexadecimal: 675a)
- Decimal 26468  (Hexadecimal: 6764)
- Decimal 26478  (Hexadecimal: 676e)
- Decimal 4096   (Hexadecimal: 1000)
- Decimal 4097   (Hexadecimal: 1001)
- Decimal 4099   (Hexadecimal: 1003)
- Decimal 4098   (Hexadecimal: 1002)
- Decimal 4100   (Hexadecimal: 1004) 
- Decimal 4101   (Hexadecimal: 1005)
- Decimal 4102   (Hexadecimal: 1006)
- Decimal 4103   (Hexadecimal: 1007)
- Decimal 4104   (Hexadecimal: 1008)
- Decimal 4105   (Hexadecimal: 1009)
- Decimal 4106   (Hexadecimal: 100a)
- Decimal 4107   (Hexadecimal: 100b)
- Decimal 4108   (Hexadecimal: 100c)
- Decimal 4109   (Hexadecimal: 100d)
- Decimal 4110   (Hexadecimal: 100e)
- Decimal 4111   (Hexadecimal: 100f)
- Decimal 4112   (Hexadecimal: 1010)


3. Supported Firmware and Firmware Tools
----------------------------------------

Firmware:
- ConnectX-3 Firmware
- ConnectX-2 Firmware fw-ConnectX2 version 2.8.0600 and above
- ConnectX fw-25408 version 2.8.0600 and above

Tools:
- MFT (Mellanox Firmware Tools) version 2.7.0 and later

4. Tested Platforms
-------------------

Server Vendor & Model    BIOS Manuf. & Version
DELL PE 2970             DELL 4.2.1       
DELL PE 2950             DELL 2.7.0       
DELL PE 1950             Phoenix 1.10 2.6.1       
DELL PE SC1435           Phoenix 2.2.5       
DELL PE R415             DELL 1.0.1
DELL PE R610             DELL 0.2.17       
DELL PE R510             DELL 1.3.6 
DELL PE R515             DELL 1.1.0       
DELL PE R710             DELL 2.2.0 
DELL PE R810             DELL 1.0.0   
DELL PE R815             DELL 0.2.5 
DELL M605 Blade          Phoenix 5.3.2       
DELL M600 Blade          DELL 1.10 2.3.1
DELL M610 Blade          DELL 2.0.3
DELL M710 Blade          DELL 1.3.6      
DELL M710HD Blade        DELL 0.1.11 
DELL M910 Blade          DELL 1.0.1        
DELL DCS C6105           DELL 0.1.9
Supermicro X6DH8-G/X6DHT-G Phoenix 6.00
Supermicro X8DTG-QF        AMI 1.0b
Supermicro X8DTU           AMI 2.0
Supermicro X8DTT           AMI 080016
Supermicro X7DWT Gen2      Phoenix 1.2b
Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX920 S1  Fujitsu 3B52.2860
HP ProLiant DL 160se-G6    HP O20       
HP ProLiant DL 360-G5      HP P58       
HP ProLiant DL 360-G6      HP P64       
HP ProLiant DL 360-G7      HP P68       
HP ProLiant DL 365 G1      HP A10       
HP ProLiant DL 380 G6      HP P62       
HP ProLiant BL490c G6 Blade   HP I21
HP ProLiant BL460c G6 Blade   HP I24       


5. Package Contents
-------------------
The FlexBoot package is provided as a tarball (.tgz extension)
containing the files specified in section 2. Supported Adapters.
1. A PXE ROM image file for each of the supported Mellanox network
   adapter devices. Specifically, 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.

6. Changes From Previous versions 
---------------------------------

6.1 Changes From Version 3.3.400
--------------------------------
- Increased DHCP timeout

6.2 Changes From Version 3.0.000
--------------------------------
- Added ConnectX-3 support
- Increased the number of the supported systems
- All iPXE features are now part of the ROM image.
- Support multiple functions (Flex10).
- Added support for Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP).
- Added ifenable/ifdisable network interface command.
- Improved reliability


7. Known Issues
---------------
- Unsupported platforms:
  o PPC
- The iPXE project includes other features that have not been tested
  on Mellanox FlexBoot. For example, SRP boot, HTTP boot and AOE boot.

- Large Receive Offload (LRO) and iSCSI may not interoperate due to a bug in
  current Linux kernel distributions. To avoid this problem when using iSCSI,
  disable LRO in the IPoIB module. See the Mellanox FlexBoot user's manual for
  details under the Diskless Machines chapter (InfiniBand Ports).
  
- Once the machine reaches the state "POST" (after BIOS execution), the user
  will be prompted to press CTRL-B to invoke Mellanox FlexBoot CLI. On
  some BIOSs invoking the CLI may not work properly. This may occur if not all
  BIOS parameters have been configured at the time of invoking the CLI.
  Workaround: Skip invoking CLI at the POST stage. Instead, invoke CLI after
              FlexBoot starts booting (you will be prompted to enter
              CTRL-B).