Sun's Federal Services Chief Technologist Peter Colson has written a post entitled, "Introduction to iSCSI Booting for x86/x64 Platforms." Initially a skeptic about iSCSI booting, Colson is now a convert, having realized that the technique offers better storage utilization, economy, and easier, less risky disaster recovery.

Colson's post incorporates three videos on the subject of this procedure. The first, "Flashing Sun PCI ExpressModule with iSCSI Firmware from Intel," covers the sequence of screen shots that develop in the course of running iscsiutl with no options to ensure the ports on the network adapter are viewable. Colson explains that the video shows how to ascertain whether the correct port is being flashed, and demonstrates as well the flashdisabling of all ports but port 1. The remaining ports can then be used to PXE boot, he writes. The video also demonstrates the application of the new firmware, during the course of which Colson says he flashed all the ports to see that only the enabled ports would flash.

At this point, Colson enables flash on all ports, if only to demonstrate that Ports 1 and 2 have iSCSI while Ports 3 and 4 continue to list PXE. He recommends disabling Port 2 prior to rebooting in order to avoid bios errors.

In the second video, "Configuring iSCSI on Sun PCI ExpressModule with iSCSIUTL," Colson shows the steps necessary to configure the adapter so it will know which iSCSI device to use for booting. He sets the boot priority of the interface to primary, booting from interface 1.

This video shows Colson setting the iSCSI initiator name, which is the Host that will use the iSCSI lun, while the Target is the device presenting the iSCSI lun. This step, he cautions, must follow the iSCSI Qualified Name convention. It is also essential to make the initiator name unique. The author also notes that configuration of the initiator needs to be disabled via DHCP, though exactly where in the sequence of things this step occurs is not critical.

The next step that the video shows, following the setting of the net mask and the gateway, is setting the Target name, again following the iSCSI Qualified Name convention, and the setting of the IP address of the target device and the TCP port. One needs also to specify which LUN is the desired boot device, Colson adds.

One of the final steps in the configuration process that the video illustrates is setting the iSCSI lun s the primary boot device, rather than any of the internal drives on the blade server.

In the final video of the series, "Booting Microsoft Windows 2003 R2 SP2 from iSCSI on x64 Blades," Colson shows the steps involved in working through a Windows 2003 R2 SP2 installation to local HDD, cloning to iSCSI and then performing the final boot. Here he notes that, while Intel would have one believe that you can load directly to an iSCSI device, the only supported way with the Sun Quad port adapter is to load to local HDD first. Colson notes that partition sizing may be dependent on the software being used to clone the disk.

The contents of the final video includes:

• Install Windows 2003 Server to Local Drive
• Install Hardware Specific Drivers
• Install iSCSI Initiator Package
• Clone Local Drive to iSCSI Target
• Verification

Colson comments frequently during the course of this video concerning steps along the way. He points out that several methods are available for creating a clone, though whatever method one chooses must support the Intel network adapter and be capable of discovering the iSCSI volume.

More Information

Intel iSCSI Remote Boot FLASH ROM Utility

New OpenSolaris Project: iSISI Boot [...read more...]

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