booting from VA7410

[Jeff Boling]

Does anyone know how I can get my Windows 2K servers to boot up from the VA7410? I can't find any information on it?

[kris rombauts]

Hi Jeff,

do you really want to do this ?
If so then first of all you need a supported fiber channel interface like Emulex LPxxxx or Qlogic on which you can enable the BIOS to boot from a fiber channel device (a VA7410 in this case). This requires sometimes specific F/W and BIOS releases to be downloaded in those FC HBA's or at least some settings in their BIOS in order to search for a bootable device.


Once that is ok and the FC HBA is able to see a LUN created on the Fiber disk array, you can boot your server from the W2K cdrom and start the installation. It's best to use a Windows 2000 CD with ServicePack2 or 3 embedded.

Their are problems if you try to install with the W2K cd without service pack, it does not work after the first reboot of the install program, i think if i remember well that it cannot find the disk and data it just created during the first part of the setup. With SP2 included this is fixed.


I don't know of a step by step white paper on this since it all depends on the FC HBA you are going to use. Remember that i.e. the D8602B cards from HP/Agilent do not have a bootrom and as such don't allow servers to boot via the fibre.


HTH

Kris