One of the ways a SAN can add value is by hosting your boot disks externally from your servers. To do this you need a remote boot technology for host operating systems known as Boot from SAN (BFS). There are three necessary ingredients to a BFS configuration:
- A boot disk image located on shared storage accessible via a SAN
- A server connected to a SAN through a host bus adapter (HBA)
- An HBA with BIOS contains instructions that enable the server to boot from SAN.
There are many benefits to doing this:
- Severs can be replaced, re-purposed, and added more quickly with boot disks hosted on SAN
- For BladeSystems, taking the boot disks out of the enclosure reduces power and cooling requirements
- Boot disks can be consolidated on an storage array for easier management, improved security, and higher availability.
- BFS minimises server maintenance and reduces backup time
Even with all these benefits, BFS is rarely deployed today due to the complexity of setting up the arrays, servers, and HBAs involved.
Since Dataplex are an HP Gold partner with a plethora of history in SAN design and deployment we can guide you through the issues and help you realise greater value from your data consolidation projects.
Need some further information then contact us on 0845 260 5757.