Cisco systems with VIC adapters and iSCSI boot on RHEL 7/RHEL 8

• The boot parameter ip=ibft is required on the kernel command line at installation time in order for iSCSI LUNs to be recognized by a VIC adapter when running RHEL 7/RHEL 8.
• Also make sure iscsi devices are presented as boot devices in UCS configuration.

Why must the ibft parameter be passed?

The iBFT (iSCSI Boot Firmware Table) is a table created by the iSCSI boot firmware on the Cisco VIC 1225T adapter in order to pass the initiator and target configuration that is programmed on the primary iSCSI VNIC to the booting operating system. By passing ip=ibft on the kernel command line the kernel module (ibft) is loaded which locates the iBFT and publishes the information found via sysfs in the directory /sys/firmware/ibft making it possible to boot from the iSCSI LUN.

Currently network interfaces are not configured from iBFT information during install unless ip=ibft is passed in on the kernel command line. Without the network interface up, the iSCSI target cannot be automatically reached using the iBFT information.