Hi all,

Is it feasible to deploy servers WITHOUT floppy and CD-ROM drives? I'm tired of putting these on each and every rack server when they are so rarely utilized after deployment.

Ideally, a USB floppy or CD-ROM drive could be connected to a server when needed. But, it must be bootable. The only USB CD-ROM drive I have worked with required Windows to fully boot before the device was recognized. That's not good enough -- will not let you flash the BIOS or boot a failed OS. Is it possible to boot from a USB device in this manner?

Any input is appreciated.

Dave

PXE.

leave the cables in the servers but don't put the drives in. Then when you need a floppy or cdrom... slide the server out and hook it up ;)

This is assuming that you have nice rails for your servers and you actually have access to them at the DC. Even at that though it's kind of a pain and much nicer when you don't have to deal with it.

It would be cool to see Dell or someone come up with a hot swappable cd-rom / floppy drive for the front of their servers (kind of like some laptops have). Although i'd imagine it wouldn't really save you much money to buy a dell without the floppy/cdrom...

Thank you for the replies, guys.

I dug into the Intel/AMI BIOS docs for one of the new P4 motherboards we are considering. It mentions the following setup option:

"USB BOOT: Enabled (default)
Enables the computer to boot from USB boot devices."

Sounds to me like at least some newer mobos/BIOS can perhaps do what I'm looking for. Has anybody tried this? Is it reliable?

Dave

Personally I have never heard about USB boot. From my point of view it's useless to put CD-ROMs and floppy disks in servers. When a problem occurs you can restore the configuration from another HDD. In most cases the rack case needs to be opened anyway.

Get a 128Meg or 256Meg USB Memory key that supports USB booting. Put your software on the key(if it fits). 1 Gig keys are due out shortly if not already out!

Stick it into USB port on server, turn on server and presto, you can boot from the USB key (if BIOS on server supports USB Boot)

They are great devices !!!!!