BOOT.INI on BL3xp servers with 2x60GB ATA disks

[DaMiBu]

I have about 100 BL30/35p blades all with 2 x 60GB ATA disks mirrored in Windows Server 2003. I am looking for a more seamless way to recover from a primary disk failure where the systems will boot from the 2nd disk without having to boot to the recovery console to change the boot.ini.

Anyone have a smart or clever way to do this so that the process is more automatic.

[Oleg Koroz]

SAS or SCSI Drives ?
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/80365-0-0-0-121.aspx

[DaMiBu]

the servers are BL30p and BL35p with Non-hot plug ATA disk drives which have no hardware RAID capabilities.

I know I could replace with dual SAS drives and a SAS mezzanine card to do hardware raid however this is a daunting and expensive proposition for 100 severs (and I do not thing the Xeon models support SAS)

[Oleg Koroz]

I believe that you need different system board in BL35 in order to Upgrade from ATA to SAS

[DaMiBu]

I know - but as I said I do not want to replace 100 of these things as I would need 200 new disk drives and 100 mezzanine cards to get hardware raid i.e. about $100k for the hardware! This is what I am trying to avoid.

I want a QUICK way to fail-over a software mirror in a BL30p or a BL35p Proliant server that already have ATA disks installed.

[Pieter 't Hart]

is it an option to change the boot.ini in advance ?
add an extra entry that points to the second disk as bootdisk.
then at boottime you just have to select the second configuration to boot from the other disk.

Pieter

[DaMiBu]

but if the first disk is bad it will not read the boot.ini. Can the boot order in the BL35/30p servers be set to boot from the 2nd disk if the first has failed? Also there is manual intervention required as the default is the first (and bad) disk.