HP Boot from SAN Configuration Guide

1 Introduction
Traditionally, servers are configured to install the operating system on internal direct-attached
storage devices. With external booting from HBAs or RAID arrays, server-based internal boot
devices can be eliminated. Booting from an external device provides high-availability features for
the operating system during the boot process by configuring the HBA BIOS with redundant boot
paths.
Booting from SAN provides:
• Improved disaster recovery
• Reduced backup time when the boot path is through a SAN
• Additional SAN-managed features
Prerequisites
To use this document, it is essential to be familiar with the infrastructure of SAN and have knowledge
of:
• HP Fibre Channel HBAs, CNAs, mezzanine cards, and LOMs
• HP Smart Array Controllers
• HP disk arrays
• HP ProLiant servers and BladeServers
• Hardware setup procedures
• Fabric administration
• Installing an operating system
• Virtual connect
• iLO
• Device Mapper multipath solution (for Linux and Citrix)
• Multipath DSM (for Windows)
• Server BIOS
• The procedure to create and map a LUN on the storage array
• The procedure to set up switch zoning
• Upgrading server BIOS to the latest released version
• Upgrading firmware on all installed cards to the latest version
For up-to-date information on supported versions of firmware, BIOS, and drivers, see the HP HBA
Support Matrix at http://h20272.www2.hp.com/Pages/spock2Html.aspx?htmlFile=hw_hbas.html&
lang=en&cc=US&. It is essential to sign up for HP Passport to enable access.
For more information about HP products, see the HP Manuals website at http://www.hp.com/
support/manuals.
For more information about SAN configurations, see the HP SAN Design Reference Guide at
http://www.hp.com/go/sdgmanuals.
4 Introduction