US Patent 7363514 Storage area network(SAN) booting method

A method for performing a boot from a storage network. A first server stores boot configuration information linked to or searchable by a network device identifier. A second server stores intermediate boot modules configured to perform input/output (I/O) functions in the storage network. At the first server, a request from a network device is received that includes a hardware identifier for the network device. The first server uses the hardware identifier to retrieve boot configuration information for the network device that is transferred to the network device and that includes a location in the storage network of a disk device containing an operating system image and the second server address. The network device obtains the boot modules from the second server and runs them using the disk device location to read the operating system image from the disk device using storage I/O functions in the boot modules.