Proliant SAN Boot instructions

[glendee kittman]

could someone give me an idea of what i need to do (at the hp level) to my DL850s and 360s to get them to boot from a SAN storage device?... the device is an IBM FAStT, if that matters... or is it all done via q-logic and my fastt side?

[kris rombauts]

Hello Glendee,

i don't know the setup details of the type of servers you mentioned on top of my head but you need to make sure the boot order is set to the Fiber card (Qlogic) or at least that it comes first in the boot order before local disk controllers.

The rest of this kind of a SAN boot setup is all to be done at the Qlogic card level, you need to make sure your card can see the LUN you want to install the server's OS on.

A couple of factors that play a role here are topology used (loop, fabric), the LUN number, LUN security (make sure this hosts Fiber card cannot see other LUNs that belong to other servers to avoid conflicts, this is generally configured at the disk array level)


Their is a boot support matrix available at this url:

http://www.qlogic.com/support/product_resources.asp?id=113

If the combination of what you want to setup is offically supported is another question.
The web also provides some specific s/w per vendor (HP, IBM, ...) have a look.


hth

Kris

[Doug de Werd]

I can't speak for the IBM storage side, but you might want to check out these white papers (they are for Windows). It gives you the details of what needs to be done for doing ProLiant SAN Boot. One is for Qlogic and HP MSA1000 storage, which might give you some insight into the QLogic BIOS setup, and then the other is for Emulex and HP MA/EVA storage, which might give you a little bit more on the conceptual part of the storage, as well as the dual path part.

ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/storageworks/techdoc/san/AA-RS2UC-TE.pdf

ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/storageworks/techdoc/msa1000/NT_Win2K_extbootsetup.pdf


Another thing that you have to consider is whether it is single or dual path to the storage. If it's single path, it's pretty straight forward. If it's dual path, then you have to watch out for how you do the initial installation - you only enable one of the HBAs in the server to the boot LUN (which has to be set up and appropriate access rights to the SAN set). Once you have done the initial installation, then you go and enable the Qlogic BIOS on the second controller.

It's not exactly what you're looking for, but I hope this helps.

Thanks,
Doug

[Randy Weis]

You definitely can't boot from the SAN if you are using FCAL (Arbitrated Loop). The LIPs generated when booting will cause problems for other servers that are SAN attached.