I'm running Vmware ESXI from the internal USB.
No matter how many times I persist the boot order so that the server boots from the internal USB, the server starts up with a blinking line cursor and does nothing.
However if during the preboot I press F12 and then select the internal USB, it successfully boots from it. But it looks like it never remembers it for the next time. I have tried this using soft reboot and hard ones which all ended up in the blinking server mode. I thought this could be a CMOS battery issue. I replaced the battery today and it made absolutely no difference.
Because of this I'm not able to detach the keyboard and memory from the server which is not convenient at all.
How do I get the BIOS to persist the "boot from USB" option?
Best Answer
I'm not sure if it's still relevant for you, but I was in the same situation as you and believe that the internal SAS controller intercepts the boot process. Do the lights on the hard disk trays blink when the boot process gets stuck?
If so and given that you want to boot from USB anyways, you can try to disable the controller for booting. You can disable booting either from the SAS configuration (CTRL-C when it boots the controllor) or by setting the PCI boot preference in the normal BIOS from SAS Planar to an empty PCI slot. This workaround helped me to persistently boot to the (internal) USB drive with the x3850 M2.