SAN Boot Implementation and Best Practices Guide for IBM System Storage

An IBM Redbooks publication

Published 30 September 2012

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ISBN-10: 0738437069
ISBN-13: 9780738437064
IBM Form #: SG24-7958-00
(478 pages)

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Authors: Sangam Racherla, Delmar Demarchi, Scott Dybas, Bobby Stark, Mansoor Syed

Abstract

Booting servers from a storage area network (SAN) is being used increasingly in complex data center environments today, due to its significant benefits over the traditional method of booting from local disks. SAN Boot enables organizations to maximize consolidation of their IT resources, minimize their equipment costs, and realize the considerable management benefits of centralizing the boot process.

In SAN Boot, you can deploy diskless servers in an environment where the boot disk is located on (often RAID-capable) storage connected to the SAN. The server (initiator) communicates with the storage device (target) through the SAN using the Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA).

The system downtime is greatly minimized in case a critical component such as a processor, memory, or host bus adapter fails and needs to be replaced. The system administrator needs to swap only the hardware and reconfigure the HBA's BIOS, switch zoning, and host-port definitions on the storage server. The system image still exists on the logical drive, therefore the server is fully operational after the hardware swap and configuration change is completed.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication can help you with the SAN Boot implementation. We present various SAN Boot scenarios using IBM System Storage® products that include DS5000, DS8000®, XIV®, and SVC.

The operating systems that are covered include Windows 2008, Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, and VMware.

Table of contents

Chapter 1. Introduction to SAN Boot
Chapter 2. SAN Boot implementation with IBM System Storage DS5000
Chapter 3. SAN Boot implementation with IBM System Storage DS8000
Chapter 4. SAN Boot implementation with IBM XIV System Storage
Chapter 5. SAN Boot implementation with IBM SAN Volume Controller and IBM Storwize v7000
Chapter 6. iSCSI SAN Boot implementation with IBM System Storage DS5000

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