Patent ID: 7499988

Claim:
In a storage area network (SAN) computer system having a volume group made up of one or more physical disks, a method for providing SAN boot devices, said method comprising: storing a boot image from a primary boot device on at least one disk within said volume group; copying boot install images from said first boot device to multiple disks within the volume group, whereby each disk of said multiple disks within said volume group may independently serve as the boot device for the SAN system and a boot process may be initiated for the SAN system from any one of the multiple disks in the volume group, wherein the SAN system is a single, bootable computer system; switching a boot sequence from a first boot device, which corresponds to the primary boot device and is external to said volume group, to the at least one disk within said volume group, wherein said switching step comprises: monitoring for an occurrence of a predefined condition on said SAN system; and initiating said switching when one of a plurality of said predefined condition occurs, wherein said predefined conditions include: (1) receiving an error signal from the first boot device when a boot up is desired; (2) being unable to access said first boot device when the boot up is desired; (3) encountering a failure on said SAN computer system that results in a shut down of said system; and (4) system administrative directive to re-boot system from a selected one of said at least one disk; subsequently completing a full boot of the SAN system from the boot image stored on the at least one disk, wherein the SAN system's boot operation is completed from within said volume group, rather than from the primary boot device, from which the boot image is copied to the at least one disk; reading of the boot image at SAN speed, wherein further no boot images are pulled from across the network; installing images from the boot logical volume at said SAN speed; and wherein when one of a system failure and a system recovery from a corrupted boot image on a primary disk occurs, said switching further comprises: booting up the SAN system in maintenance mode; generating a prompt for a system administrator to select the boot device from among a displayed list of available boot devices; and automatically encoding the identification and routing information of the selected boot device in a BIOS (basic input/output system) path for accessing the boot device to complete a boot of the SAN system, wherein the boot device selected is the at least one disk within the volume group.