SAN Boot Opinions

[Anonymous_User]

Because this is a forum, and thus a medium for exchange of ideas and not
just a place for us to run to only in times of disaster :-), I'd like to
get a little discussion going on about what people think about the option
of SAN Boot.

We have most of our servers SAN booting, and we have no problems with it so
far. However, I'm seeing more and more at other sites where the emphasis
is to NOT SAN boot. The reason being, if your SAN goes down, you can't
boot your servers.

That makes sense, except if you think about it, if all your resources are
on the SAN unit, and your SYS is on the server itself, what good is it
really to boot up your server if you can't provide the services? The only
benefit I can think of is if we need to boot up the server for eDir
maintenance and the like. Other exceptions might be clustered DHCP which
relies on the SYS volume and doesn't use a pool.

So what's everyone else's opinion?

Bryen

[Anonymous_User]

Apart from the philosohpical issues on what is better, there are some
technical issues to tackle if you want to boot from SAN:

1) Your fiberchannel adapter must supporting booting from SAN

2) The driver for your fiberchannel adapter must support having thew DOS
partition on the SAN (though this should be less an issue with NetWare 6.5)

3) Multipath support can potentially be a problem depending on how its
handled

--
Marcel Cox (using XanaNews 1.18.1.6)

[Anonymous_User]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:38:42 -0800, Marcel Cox <cimetmc@myrealbox.com>
wrote:

> Apart from the philosohpical issues on what is better, there are some
> technical issues to tackle if you want to boot from SAN:
>
> 1) Your fiberchannel adapter must supporting booting from SAN

Where do you find one that don't?

> 2) The driver for your fiberchannel adapter must support having thew DOS
> partition on the SAN (though this should be less an issue with NetWare
> 6.5)

NW 65 and FATFS handle this very well.

/dps

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[Anonymous_User]

Dave Schneider wrote:

>>1) Your fiberchannel adapter must supporting booting from SAN
>
>Where do you find one that don't?

I think it's no longer an issue now. However I vaguely remember that some
years ago, not every firberchannel adapter had a propert BIOS to support
booting.

--
Marcel Cox (using XanaNews 1.18.1.6)

[Anonymous_User]

In article <AZJvh.11013$Sz4.9063@prv-forum2.provo.novell.com>, wrote:
> We have most of our servers SAN booting, and we have no problems with it so
> far. However, I'm seeing more and more at other sites where the emphasis
> is to NOT SAN boot. The reason being, if your SAN goes down, you can't
> boot your servers.
>
Seems logical to me.

Why not take it a step further, where you are clustering your nodes, and the
servers are virtualized on top of that?

Craig Johnson
Novell Support Connection SysOp

[Anonymous_User]

SAN boot = good. Easy question. Pass the beer... 🙂

one philosophical point is keeping all the disk in one place so you
have less things to worry about (local drives failing and/or
maintinaing mirrored drive sets for DOS/SYS).

another is that a high-quality networked resource is usually more
productive, high capacity/faster throughput and more reliable than an
on the box resource: networked file storage vs. local HDs, networked
printers vs. everyone having a local printer, etc...


--
Cheers!
Richard Beels
~ Network Consultant
~ Sysop, Novell Support Connection
~ MCNE, CNE*, CNA*, CNS*, N*LS

[Anonymous_User]

Hmm... That's an interesting concept. Care to go into it more? I would
definitely be interested in exploring this as an option for other
implementations if I understand more what you're getting at.

Bryen

> In article <AZJvh.11013$Sz4.9063@prv-forum2.provo.novell.com>, wrote:
> > We have most of our servers SAN booting, and we have no problems with it so
> > far. However, I'm seeing more and more at other sites where the emphasis
> > is to NOT SAN boot. The reason being, if your SAN goes down, you can't
> > boot your servers.
> >
> Seems logical to me.
>
> Why not take it a step further, where you are clustering your nodes, and the
> servers are virtualized on top of that?
>
> Craig Johnson
> Novell Support Connection SysOp
>

[Anonymous_User]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 13:48:42 -0800, Marcel Cox <cimetmc@myrealbox.com>
wrote:

> Dave Schneider wrote:
>
>>> 1) Your fiberchannel adapter must supporting booting from SAN
>>
>> Where do you find one that don't?
>
> I think it's no longer an issue now. However I vaguely remember that
> some years ago, not every firberchannel adapter had a propert BIOS to
> support booting.

There have been times when certain configurations were problematic. But
by and large, booting from SAN is a done deal these daze.

/dps

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Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/

[Anonymous_User]

In article <mT2wh.12009$Sz4.2278@prv-forum2.provo.novell.com>, wrote:
> Hmm... That's an interesting concept. Care to go into it more? I would
> definitely be interested in exploring this as an option for other
> implementations if I understand more what you're getting at.
>
I'm thinking of a brainshare presentation from last year. (Perhaps you can
scare up the video - it was in one of the general sessions).

Multi-node cluster, running on top of Linux, I think, and runnig Xen, I
think. Then all the production 'servers' were virtualize, some being
Linux, some NetWare, some Windows. You could create them easily for
testing, and then with a few mouse clicks put them into production. Need
another server? Just add another virtual server into the mix. It looked
very interesting, but then the devil is in the details, isn't it?

Craig Johnson
Novell Support Connection SysOp