Overview
NVIDIA® PreBoot drivers are a multiprotocol remote boot technology that support remote Boot over InfiniBand (BoIB) and over Ethernet.
Using Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) technologies available in NVIDIA® ConnectX® adapters, PreBoot drivers give IT Managers’ the choice to boot from a remote storage target (iSCSI target) or a LAN target (Ethernet Remote Boot Server) using a single ROM image on ConnectX products.
FlexBoot is based on the open source project iPXE available at http://www.ipxe.org.
PreBoot drivers first initialize the adapter device, senses the port protocol – Ethernet or InfiniBand, and brings up the port. Then it connects to a DHCP server to obtain its assigned IP address and network parameters, and also to obtain the source location of the kernel/OS to boot from. The DHCP server instructs the PreBoot drivers to access the kernel/OS through a TFTP server, an iSCSI target, or some other service.
Supported Adapter Cards and Firmware
|
Adapter Card |
Bundled Firmware Version |
|
BlueField®-3 |
32.39.2048 |
|
BlueField®-2 |
24.39.2048 |
|
ConnectX-7 |
28.39.2048 |
|
ConnectX-6 Lx |
26.39.2048 |
|
ConnectX-6 Dx |
22.39.2048 |
|
ConnectX-6 |
20.39.2048 |
The following are the supported legacy HCAs and firmware versions:
|
HCAs |
Firmware Version |
FlexBoot Version |
UEFI Version |
|
NVIDIA ConnectX-5 / NVIDIA ConnectX-5 Ex |
16.35.2000 |
3.6.901 |
14.29.14 |
|
NVIDIA BlueField |
18.33.1048 |
3.6.502 |
14.26.17 |
|
ConnectX-4 Lx |
14.32.1010 |
14.25.17 |
|
|
ConnectX-4 |
12.28.2006 |
3.6.102 |
14.22.14 |
|
ConnectX-3/ConnectX-3 Pro |
2.42.5000 |
3.4.752 |
N/A |
For the complete list of supported cards, please refer to NVIDIA® ConnectX®-4 Lx and above firmware web pages at http://www.mellanox.com/page/firmware_download.
Supported Tools (MFT)
|
Tools |
Version |
|
MFT |
4.26.1 |
Software Downloads
Document Revision History
A list of the changes made to this document are provided in User Manual Revision History.