METHOD, APPARATUS, AND PROGRAM FOR PERFORMING BOOT, MAINTENANCE, OR INSTALL OPERATIONS ON A STORAGE AREA NETWORK

摘要

METHOD, APPARATUS, AND PROGRAM FOR PERFORMING BOOT, MAINTENANCE, OR INSTALL OPERATIONS ON A STORAGE AREA NETWORK A mechanism is provided for configuring a set of devices for a given machine attached to a storage area network (102). The initial program load firmware and network adapter firmware for each machine (104-108) on the storage area network (102) are modified to query a storage area network appliance (120) for lists of devices. The storage area network appliance (120) may be identified by a world wide name and may store lists of boot devices, root volume group devices, primary devices, and secondary devices for each machine on the storage area network. The storage area network appliance (120) then listens for queries and returns the appropriate list of devices based on query type and/or boot type. The boot type for a machine may be set to normal boot, maintenance boot, or install boot.