Starting storage system through the netboot option

You can use the netboot option to start your storage system, booting from a Data ONTAP version stored on a remote HTTP or TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) server.

Before You Begin

To use the netboot option to start your storage system, you must have:

An HTTP or TFTP server available on your network.
A boot image on a server. The boot image can be copied from the system boot directory, /etc/boot/netapp-mips, or downloaded from the NOW site.
Note: You can also store the boot image on another storage system.

Networking configured in the firmware environment. You can use a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server to obtain an IP address, or you can configure the network connection manually.
Note: Network interfaces configured in the firmware environment are not persistent across system halts and reboots. You must configure the network interface each time you use the netboot option.
Two network interfaces, e0a and e0b, are available in the firmware environment. Only one can be configured at a time.

Considerations

If your storage system includes the e0M management port, which is the port dedicated for management activities, you should use e0M to perform the netboot.

Steps

At the storage system console, enter the following command: halt
Enter one of the following commands at the boot environment prompt:
- If you are configuring DHCP, enter: ifconfig e0a -auto
- If you are configuring manual connections, enter: ifconfig e0a -addr=filer_addr -mask=netmask -gw=gateway -dns=dns_addr -domain=dns_domain
filer_addr is the IP address of the storage system.
netmask is the network mask of the storage system.

gateway is the gateway for the storage system.

dns_addr is the IP address of a name server on your network.

dns_domain is the Domain Name Service (DNS) domain name. If you use this optional parameter, you do not need a fully qualified domain name in the netboot server URL; you need only the server’s host name.
Note: Other parameters might be necessary for your interface. Enter help ifconfig at the firmware prompt for details.
At the boot environment prompt, enter the following command:netboot URL
URL is the location of the remote boot image. It can be either an HTTP or a TFTP network path.
Example
netboot http://myserver/bootimages/ontap/ontap-mipsnetboot tftp://myserver/bootimages/ontap/ontap-mips
Note: The location and availability of boot images depend on the correct configuration of your netboot server.

Parent topic: How to boot the storage system

Related concepts

The e0M interface

Related information

http://now.netapp.com/