Mar 2, 2012
tom
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IBM x3620 Server takes a long time to boot past UEFI to OS

Question

I have a pair of IBM System x3620 servers. These servers do fine once they finally reach the point where the operating system takes over, but it takes them forever to get past the new-fangled UEFI boot system… a good five minutes or so; maybe longer. I haven’t timed it, but it’s the kind of thing where you go get a cup of coffee while you wait and it’s still going when you come back.

Normally the only time I shut these down is for a monthly maintenance cycle (usually just windows updates), and so it’s not a big deal. But in the case where I might have an outage I’d sure like to get that 5 minutes back. Is there anything I can do to tell them to just go ahead and boot already?

Asked by Joel Coel

Answer

All IBM uEFI Machines take ages to boot, as after the eon-taking uEFI initialization and module startup the legacy BIOS emulation kicks in and the PCI-E option ROMs get executed etc. etc. This is “normal” on all IBM uEFI machines – no matter if blade or standard rack server.

You could disable legacy BIOS boot, the option ROMs, optimize the boot order and generally keep that machine to the newest firmware level offered by IBM.

Answered by pfo

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