Configuring SAN boot in a Veritas environment

You can set up a SAN boot LUN to work in a Veritas Storage Foundation environment.

1. Create a LUN on the storage system.
   This LUN will be the SAN boot LUN.
2. Map the LUN to the host.
3. Ensure that only one primary path is available to the LUN.
4. Ensure that only one SAN boot LUN is available to the host.
5. Enable the boot BIOS of the HBA port to which the SAN boot LUN is mapped.
   It is best to enable the spinup delay option for the HBA port.

   For information about how to enable the boot BIOS, see the HBA vendor-specific documentation.

6. After performing the appropriate changes to the HBA BIOS and ensuring that the SAN boot LUN is visible, install the operating system on the SAN boot LUN.

   Before installing the operating system, see the section on rootability in the Veritas Volume Manager Administrator’s Guide for Linux that is shipped along with the software for partitioning information.

   Note: The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 4 distribution does not include HBA drivers for 4-Gb and 8-Gb QLogic cards; therefore, you must use the device driver kit provided by QLogic. For more information about the supported drivers, see the NetApp Interoperability Matrix.

   Note: When you install the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system, you must ensure that GRUB is installed in the Master Boot Record. You can do this from the Expert tab in the software package selection screen during installation.
7. After installing the operating system, reboot the host.

   The host boots from the SAN boot LUN on the storage system through a primary path.

8. Install the Linux Host Utilities.
9. If you are using HBA drivers acquired from an OEM, install the supported versions of the drivers.
10. Verify the HBA settings.
11. Install Veritas Storage Foundation and any appropriate patches or fixes for it.
12. Configure the vxdmp restore daemon by setting it to an interval of 60: vxdmptune dmp_restore_interval 60

    On reboot, this value takes effect and remains persistent across system reboots.

13. For Veritas Storage Foundation 5.1 and later, set the Veritas DMP LUN retries tunable to a value of 300: vxdmpadm settune dmp_lun_retry_timeout=300
    The new value takes effect immediately.
14. For Veritas Storage Foundation 6 series and InfoScale 7.0 series, set the Veritas DMP LUN retries tunable to a value of 60: vxdmpadm settune dmp_lun_retry_timeout=60
    The new value takes effect immediately.
15. (For Veritas Storage Foundation 5.1 SP1 and later, InfoScale 7 series, set the value of the dmp_path_age to an interval of 120 by entering the following command: vxdmpadm settune dmp_path_age=120
    The new value takes effect immediately.
16. Enable persistence by entering the following command: vxddladm set namingscheme=osn persistence=yes
    You must enable persistence before you can encapsulate the root disk.
17. Encapsulate the root disk for use in VxVM: vxdiskadm

    For the detailed steps, see the section on encapsulating the disk in the Veritas Volume Manager Administrator’s Guide for Linux that is shipped along with the software.

18. Reboot the host after encapsulation.
19. Verify the encapsulation: vxprint

    This command displays the rootvol and swapvol volumes under the corresponding disk group.

20. Configure the paths to the HBA boot BIOS as primary, secondary, tertiary, and so on, on the boot device.

    For more information, see the respective HBA vendor-specific documentation.