SAN booting is the general term for booting a Windows host from a storage system LUN instead of an internal hard disk. The host might or might not have any hard drives installed.
- Deploying Microsoft Dfs With Netapp Storage Systems Youtube
- Deploying Microsoft Dfs With Netapp Storage Systems 2017
Deploying Microsoft Dfs With Netapp Storage Systems Youtube
SAN booting offers many advantages. Because the system (C:) drive is located on the storage system, all of the reliability and backup features of the storage system are available to the system drive. You can also clone system drives to simplify deploying many Windows hosts and to reduce the total storage needed. SAN booting is especially useful for blade servers.
Deploying Microsoft Dfs With Netapp Storage Systems 2017
The downside of SAN booting is that loss of connectivity between the host and storage system can prevent the host from booting. Be sure to use a reliable connection to the storage system.
For prior migrations, they had utilized host-based tools for copying CIFS or NFS platform storage. In addition, the customer had Microsoft DFS (Distributed File System) sporadically deployed in their environment and wanted to ensure that, where it did exist, all DFS links would be updated to reflect the new target storage. System administrators have to decide how to share folders and how the users will be able to find them. Distributed file System (DFS) is a set of client and server services that allow an organization using Microsoft Windows servers to organize many distributed SMB / file shares into a distributed file system.
There are two options for SAN booting a Windows host:
- Fibre Channel HBA
- Requires one or more supported adapters. These same adapters can also be used for data LUNs. The Windows Host Utilities installer automatically configures required HBA settings.
- iSCSI software boot
- Requires a supported network interface card (NIC) and a special version of the Microsoft iSCSI software initiator.
For information on iSCSI software boot, see the vendor (Intel or IBM) documentation for the iSCSI boot solution you choose. Also, see NetApp Technical Report 3644.