Hi all,

I am about to embark on my first SAN project, and just need to confirm
a few things before I get going.

The plan is to get a stack of Sun T1000 1u servers (mainly because they
offer a real punch in a tiny form factor), serving web content in a
load-balanced configuration. Because they only have a single SATA
internal drive, my current plan is to connect them to a SAN to boot
from, so they're more resilient against faliure.

I'd be using Sun's official HBAs (SG-XPCIE1FC-QF4, as listed in the
T2000 options - I'm assuming this is a standard part and will still
work on a T1000) and a DotHill Sannet II[1] FC array, connected through
a Qlogic switch.

It appears that stock Solaris won't boot from a SAN, and needs some
modification - eg: you can't just hook a box up to the SAN, create a
volume and install directly onto it.

So far, as far as I can tell, I'd need to :

1. Create the boot volume on the SAN for the T1000
2. Install Solaris 10 onto the internal SATA drive (over the net, using
Jumpstart as there's no CD/DVD drive)
3. Patch and install SFS software[2] and update firmware on HBAs
4. Partition & label new boot volume on the SAN the same as the
internal drive
5. Copy everything from the internal drive over to the SAN volume,
install bootblock, modify vfstab etc.
6. Cross fingers
7. Boot from new device

I would greatly appreciate it if anyone who has set up Solaris to boot
from a SAN volume before could advise me on whether this will work, if
I've missed anything out or am completely barking up the wrong tree.

Many thanks in advance,

-Mark

[1]=http://www.dothill.com/products/sannet2_fc.htm
[2]=http://www.sun.com/storage/san/

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