asked on

ESXI 5.1 Cisoc UCS Boot From SAN

My company has just started to get Cisoc UCS B-Series servers and we are going to set them up as boot from SAN. We have a seperate storage group than managed every aspect of or SAN. I personally have never setup ESXI to boot from SAN. I have aready read the following article but have the following question.

1) WHen you present LUN0 to one host ato install ESXI on do you then present the same LUN to other server so they can boot from the same image.

2) If all host boot from SAN and do not have local storage where are settings like network, host name etc stored. If the host is reboot they would be lost since it would be in memory only. Does the UCS manager help with this at all? We are not using Auto Deploy

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

We think it's rather old fashioned these days to BOOT from LUN, it was something that was done a lot in the "old days" of fibre channel, before VMware, released the Embedded Version of ESXi, e.g. the ability to use USB Flash drives or SD cards in servers, that did not have any local storage for the OS.

It was very common with ESX (not i), some organisation still boot blades from LUN0, using ESXi.

1. I'm afraid not. Each ESXi server must have it's own unique LUN0. If you configure multiple ESXi hosts to share the same BOOT (LUN0), image corruption will occur.

2. not applicable, as all hosts need their own BOOT LUN.

You will need multiple LUNs, e.g. LUN per ESXi host.

Zacharia Kurian

WHen you present LUN0 to one host ato install ESXI on do you then present the same LUN to other server so they can boot from the same image

Very bad idea. You will face image corruption. You can test such kind of scenario and see it yourself.

Zac.

compdigit44

ASKER

Thanks for the great replies. So if each host has it own boot volume all host specific settings are stored on LUN0 correct. We actually have a consultant coming in this week to setup our first three UCS blades. I know our exist IBM blades have flash option I am not sure if UCS has this as well.

Anything we should be aware of went setting up the UCS server with ESXi. Does any one know what HBA card's they use?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Zacharia Kurian

Andrew,

We do expect an article from you on Cisoc UCS-Vmare configuration.

Zac.