PENDING Devices PXE Booting to the same server regardless of location

[Mitchell]

Good Morning, we have 14 DP's with PXE enabled across our organization. Each DP is geographically located at its own site. The issue we are having is no matter what location the device is booting from, its pulling from only one of the DP's. This is degrading imaging because devices at other locations are having to go over the WAN to pull down the half gig boot image file which takes longer than usual. We are using Infloblox as our DNS solution. Any ideas?

 

[Prajwal Desai]

So does this mean the clients are also downloading the content from one DP instead of local DP?

 

[Mitchell]

So does this mean the clients are also downloading the content from one DP instead of local DP?

From what we can tell the clients are downloading content from their own DP rather than the one. This seems to only be impacting PXE, we did update our Boot Image around the time we noticed this.

 

[Prajwal Desai]

If what you said is true, how are you pointing the clients to talk to PXE server: DHCP or IP Helpers?

 

[Mitchell]

If what you said is true, how are you pointing the clients to talk to PXE server: DHCP or IP Helpers?

I believe we are using IP helpers as that would allow us to PXE boot from any location.

 

[Prajwal Desai]

In that case, your network team must resolve the issue. You have to tell them that the clients are not downloading from the Site DP. The correct IP helper configuration can resolve this issue.

 

[Mitchell]

In that case, your network team must resolve the issue. You have to tell them that the clients are not downloading from the Site DP. The correct IP helper configuration can resolve this issue.

Thanks, I'll reach out to our team. Are you suggesting there would be a different IP helper config on each router at those locations?

 

[Mitchell]

Networking has confirmed the IP helpers are configured correctly. Could this have something to do with changing out our boot image?

 

[Prajwal Desai]

Networking has confirmed the IP helpers are configured correctly. Could this have something to do with changing out our boot image?

If the IP helpers are configured correctly, the clients should not talk to other DP at all. All this can be monitored with network tools. IP helpers work as intended, and it is a recommended approach to using DHCP.

 

[Mitchell]

I will ask our networking team if they can check the IP helper configuration on these routers.

 

[Prajwal Desai]

One more thing, if the IP helpers are configured for a remote site and the clients in that site aren't following them, use the network tools to trace what's happening there. Pick one site and begin the troubleshooting.

 

[Mitchell]

We may have found the issue. We're told the IP helper configuration is pulled from Infloblox. We have found in Infoblox that there are parent networks with the boot server set to the one DP. We are going to audit these settings and clean this up while testing along the way. One question I have though, in Infloblox for the boot file, will the path have to point to the specific boot file or could we just define the path out to the directory containing the boot files? Would the device be smart enough to choose the correct boot file?

 

[Prajwal Desai]

I guess it would be the path to the specific boot file. But since I haven't worked on infoblox, I am not completely sure.

 

[Mitchell]

Ok, thanks, we are fully a Windows shop, should we look at using the wdsmgfw.efi file or wdsnbp.com? Our Desktop team would like the option to press F12 and not have to press enter afterwards to kick off the net boot.

 

[Mitchell]

We can consider this issue resolved. The root cause was there was a global setting in Infoblox configured to point all sites to the one DP when PXE booting. Since removing this setting, we have confirmed from several locations they were pulling the correct DP.