Boot from SAN

The Oracle FS Path Manager (FSPM) software supports booting the host using a LUN on an Oracle FS System accessed over iSCSI or FC as the system drive.

You can use the LUN as a system drive, but we recommend that you use a storage device directly attached to the host as the paging file.

To use this feature, your system and configuration must support booting from a SAN-attached drive. Verify with your system and CNA, HBA, or NIC manufacturers that boot from SAN is supported.

Setting up a SAN with network boot technology has many hardware dependencies and deployment scenarios that are beyond the scope of this document. Configuration of boot-from-SAN depends on your system, refer to your system and hardware vendor documentation.

Note: Booting from SAN with the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) on Itanium-based systems has not been tested in this release. If you want to set up an Itanium-based system for boot from SAN with FSPM, first contact your host hardware vendor, and then contact the Oracle Customer Support.

Boot-from-iSCSI-SAN can use any of three mechanisms:

iSCSI HBAs
iSCSI-boot-enabled Ethernet NICs (for example, using Intel PRO/1000 PT Server Adapters with iSCSI boot firmware)
Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) boot of secondary bootstrap (for example, using Vision Solutions' Double-Take Flex)

For information on how to set up a Windows system to boot from a SAN-attached drive, refer to the following Microsoft articles:

Support for booting from a Storage Area Network (SAN) (⁠http://⁠support.microsoft.com/kb/305547)
Windows Boot from Fibre Channel SAN (⁠http://⁠www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f4095fae-553d-4700-aafa-1cce38b5618f)
Microsoft iSCSI Boot Guide (⁠http://⁠technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee619733(WS.10).aspx)