Multipathing during boot
When booting from SAN, how can I provide multiple paths via HBA's? If I boot from the SAN and my HBA fails, connectivity to my OS fails. Is automatic failover to my second HBA possible to maintain connectivity to the operating system on the SAN?

    Requires Free Membership to View

    Login

    When you register for SearchStorage.com, you’ll also receive targeted emails from my team of award-winning editorial writers. Our goal is to keep you informed on the hottest topics, the latest news and the biggest challenges you face as a storage professional today.

    Rich Castagna, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchStorage.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchStorage.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

The short answer is: No. Multipath is not supported during boot, since it depends on special multipathing drivers to load, which happens during boot. So, if a path fails during boot, before these drivers have loaded, the boot will probably fail. A server, however, may be configured (this varies by OS) to boot from a number of locations in a sequence. If one boot device fails, booting would happen from the second source.

This was first published in May 2005