Q-Logic 8100 SERIES manual Boot-from-SAN, Comparing Npiv Physical and Virtual Ports

8–Configuring FCoE in a Linux Environment Boot-from-SAN

Figure 8-11. Comparing NPIV Physical and Virtual Ports

Boot-from-SAN

For legacy servers, the most common boot method was to boot from a direct-attached disk. When booting from direct-attached disk, the server BIOS/UEFI locates the SCSI/IDE adapter BIOS, which contains instructions that enable the server to determine which of its internal direct-attach disks is the boot device. This boot method is called local boot. Local boot is not fault tolerant, nor does it allow centralized management of operating system images for rapid deployment scenarios and disaster recovery options. While many modern servers provide high-availability local disk configurations through server-based RAID controllers, other issues with local boot are paving the way for alternative boot methods.

The boot-from-SAN method places the boot device on the SAN—not locally on the server, as with direct-attached disks. This boot device is a LUN that resides on a Fibre Channel storage array device. The server communicates with the storage array on the SAN through a Fibre Channel adapter or a Converged Network Adapter. The adapter boot code (BIOS or UEFI) contains the instructions that enable the server to find the boot disk on the SAN.

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