Storage system with boot appliance for improving reliability/availability/serviceability in high density server environments

摘要

The present invention is directed to a boot appliance for a data storage system. The boot appliance is a self-contained, pre-configured device that serves as a boot device for multiple servers. The boot appliance contains multiple hard drives which are configured into one or more RAID volumes. Each volume is divided into multiple partitions, with each partition serving as the boot drive for any server connected to it. The boot appliance provides its own environmental controls and Ethernet connection which may be used for providing alerts regarding the health of the components of the boot appliance and/or data storage system to a monitoring system, such as a network management system. The boot appliance may provide a boot drive and operating system image to multiple servers at the same time.

主权项

1. A data storage system, comprising:
a plurality of servers; an enclosure, the enclosure configured for at least substantially containing the plurality of servers; and a boot appliance including a controller board and a plurality of connectors connected to the controller board, the boot appliance being communicatively coupled with the plurality of servers via the plurality of connectors, the boot appliance including a plurality of disk drives, wherein the boot appliance is configured for providing a boot drive and an operating system image to multiple servers included in the plurality of servers; wherein the boot appliance provides a Target Mode, wherein the Target Mode operates in multiple protocols; and wherein the boot appliance includes a protocol translation layer, the protocol translation layer being connected to the controller board, the protocol translation layer being communicatively coupled with the plurality of connectors.