Ive been moving everything towards an ESXi BFS shop as we migrate standalone hosts to Flexpod (cisco ucs-netapp-vmware) virtual environments. The design docs for Flexpod or vBlock rack stacks prefer a BFS environment to get all the benefits listed below plus server statelessness. There is definately some added complexity compared to local installs. We used to run clustered bfs dec\compaq\hp alphas with an ERP workload that worked cleanly for a LONG time..too long.
________________________________ From: Christopher Bodnar <[email protected]> To: NT System Admin Issues <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2011 8:53 AM Subject: RE: Boot from SAN This is the first environment that I've been in that does this. And having worked in other places of similar size (10K+) that don't do this, I can say that the operational benefits are impressive. For example the ease of getting an image on a new piece of hardware is very easy. No networking involved. SanCopy images (EMC environment), are just masked to the new device. It's almost instantaneous. And again, the entire networking aspect is removed from the equation for this part of the process. The ability to troubleshoot by masking the OS LUN do different hardware is also very useful. I can see how this would be overkill in a smaller environment, but for a company with the right mix of infrastructure, it's definitely a valid choice. Chris Bodnar, MCSE, MCITP Technical Support III Distributed Systems Service Delivery - Intel Services Guardian Life Insurance Company of America Email: [email protected] Phone: 610-807-6459 Fax: 610-807-6003 From: Brian Desmond <[email protected]> To: "NT System Admin Issues" <[email protected]> Date: 12/14/2011 05:01 PM Subject: RE: Boot from SAN ________________________________ Seems incredibly complicated to me for a fundamental process. Thanks, Brian Desmond [email protected] w – 312.625.1438 | c – 312.731.3132 From: Christopher Bodnar [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 1:32 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Boot from SAN I'll chime in on that. We are a boot from SAN environment ( on the Windows side) and the benefits are great. Reduce Server Footprints Centralized Image Management Disaster and Server Failure Recovery High Availability Rapid Redeployment Green This is taken directly from this MS doc: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=boot%20from%20san%20benefits&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.microsoft.com%2Fdownload%2Ff%2F9%2F7%2Ff9775acc-baa6-45cc-9dec-b82983705620%2FBoot%2520from%2520SAN%2520in%2520Windows.doc&ei=LhTpTs-ZHKfW0QHcwJX5CQ&usg=AFQjCNFXNSJ6YULX0LC1xyaeCn9xgkfAKg I agree with every point. The only exceptions we have are for a portion of your domain controllers. In our environment we have a number of power down exercises per year, and a lot of dependencies on AD. So we have (2) physical domain controllers here at our main site that use local disk, and one DC at each remote site uses local disk. This way we can power those up more quickly, and then bring the rest of the environment up that relies on AD. Chris Bodnar, MCSE, MCITP Technical Support III Distributed Systems Service Delivery - Intel Services Guardian Life Insurance Company of America Email: [email protected] Phone: 610-807-6459 Fax: 610-807-6003 From: Brian Desmond <[email protected]> To: "NT System Admin Issues" <[email protected]> Date: 12/14/2011 04:01 PM Subject: RE: Boot from SAN ________________________________ I would start with “Why?”. Thanks, Brian Desmond [email protected] w – 312.625.1438 | c – 312.731.3132 From: David Lum [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 12:52 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Boot from SAN We have a team here that wants to use boot from SAN instead of boot from local for some servers. Any caveats to look for? 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