sanbootconf

sanbootconf is the Windows SAN Boot Configuration Driver. It provides assistance for non-standard Windows SAN boot methods, such as:

• Booting Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 ¹⁾ via iSCSI.

• Booting Windows from an Infiniband SCSI RDMA Protocol (SRP) target.

• Booting Windows from a Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) target.

sanbootconf also provides additional diagnostic information about the SAN boot process (both on-screen and via a kernel debugger connection), which may be useful if your SAN boot is failing.

You can download the latest version as an MSI installer package from http://git.ipxe.org/release/sanbootconf/sanbootconf-latest.msi.

Older versions are available from http://git.ipxe.org/releases/sanbootconf. The source code is maintained in a git repository at http://git.ipxe.org/sanbootconf.git.

While booted from a local disk, download the latest version of sanbootconf and install it. You can then transfer the disk image to a SAN target and boot from it using your SAN protocol.

sanbootconf is free, open-source software licensed under the GNU GPL.

If you are trying to boot Windows Server 2008 R2 from a SAN target, then you may need to apply hotfix KB976042.

sanbootconf will display text on the boot splash screen which appears while the kernel is looking for the boot disk. For example:

   iSCSI boot via iPXE
   iqn.2010-04.org.ipxe.duckling:initiator
   56:3c:dc:73:51:7e 10.0.0.186/255.255.255.0 gw 10.0.0.1
   10.0.0.115 iqn.2010-04.org.ipxe.duckling:win2k8

In this case, you can see that sanbootconf has detected that the system is attempting to boot via iSCSI. The IP address configuration is displayed along with the iSCSI initiator and target details.

More detailed information is available by attaching a Windows kernel debugger. You can also try contacting the sanbootconf developers for assistance.