Qlogic QLE2460

[thenjduke]

Hey all I was wondering anyone have any expierence on adding QLE2460 Driver into a Windows PE boot disk and copy the local C drive to a Drive on the SAN like ghosting? We are looking to do this to get one last server over to Boot from SAN and X64 and EMC does not support X64 with the tool they use.

[Tripredacus]

FYI to anyone looking at this thread. THis device is an HBA, here is a spec sheet for example:

http://www.dell.com/content/products/produ...;l=en&s=bsd

I definately have not had any experience with this type of device. Have you already tried to use this device in your PE?

[thenjduke]

I have intergrated the driver in a Windows 2003 Install CD using Nlite but we are looking to take a local copy of windows partition and move it to partition on the SAN. We do have other servers booting off SAN already but EMC image software does not work with Windows 2003 X64 and this particular machine is W2k3 X64. This is the last machine we have to move over to the SAN. Reason being is we have a DR site that is identical to our main datacenter and want to test failover but this is the last piece to get on the SAN. The San replicates to the other SAN so now see why I am asking. I do know the specs on the HBA card already and what capable of doing as we use them in all our servers. I just want to test a Windows PE with these drivers to clone the disk to san.

[Tripredacus]

In a simple method, although it may be time consuming, is that you could use Imagex to capture the partition to a WIM file. You can store this WIM file anywhere that you would like, on the client's hard disk, or upload it to a file server, etc. Then you would need to take the files from the WIM and put them on the SAN, however I am not certain I understand how they work well enough to come up with a method of deploying the image onto it.

Let me throw out some ideas and you can tell me if this makes any sense or if it gives you an idea. Typically, you would redeploy an image with imagex to the client you booted into the PE. However, imagex does not really care where it is being deployed to, you just need to specify a path for it to go. So let's say, for example, you have a mount point you can make available, and be able to map a network drive to it. Then you can have imagex apply the image to that drive letter instead of the local disk's drive letter.

The only concerns I have about this idea is:

1. Make sure that the image will write only to the specific destination, and have enough space allocated to allow it to be deployed.

2. A likely considerable network load if the WIM is located in a place other than the local disk, or even the fact that you would be uploading the image over the network...

I haven't attempted this method at all, but its what popped into my head atm.