A system and method for efficient use of zones in a storage system. The method includes: building a frontier set comprising one or more zones of one or more storage devices for writing to; writing data to at least one zone of the one or more zones included in the frontier set; and during a bootup sequence: accessing a frontier set list to identify the one or more zones in the frontier set; and scanning the one or more zones to identify the at least one zone that data was written to.

An information handling system may include a processor and first non-transitory computer-readable media communicatively coupled to the processor and having stored thereon a basic input/output system (BIOS) core comprising BIOS core firmware sufficient to execute features of a BIOS of the information handling system to a particular portion of BIOS execution and an extension agent configured to identify and enumerate a firmware volume of a second non-transitory computer-readable media communicatively coupled to the processor and having stored thereon a BIOS extension comprising BIOS extension firmware for executing completion of BIOS execution from the particular portion of BIOS execution.

A layered composite boot device, and a corresponding layered composite file system, can be implemented by a boot manager. Requests directed to the layered composite boot device and file system, can be serviced from a primary device and file system that are encapsulated by the layered composite boot device and file system. The primary device and file system can correspond to a virtualized file system within a container environment, thereby enabling changes within the container environment to affect early stages of operating system booting in the container environment. Should such requests not be serviceable from the primary layers, the composite device and file system can comprise secondary layers that can correspond to a container host connection and the host file system, providing fallback to existing data if changes within the container environment were not made, thereby enabling booting to proceed in a traditional manner.

An information handling system may include an unsupported information handling resource that has not been qualified by a manufacturer of the information handling system for use with the information handling system. The system may execute a system update procedure configured to: download a vendor update package for the unsupported information handling resource; determine that the vendor update package requires an operating system different from a currently installed operating system of the information handling system; create a bootable medium comprising the operating system and the vendor update package; trigger a first reboot of the information handling system into the operating system of the bootable medium, wherein the bootable medium is configured to install the vendor update package; and trigger a second reboot of the information handling system into the currently installed operating system of the information handling system.

The present disclosure generally relates to reducing boot latency of memory devices in a dual boot system. The boot code is loaded to the data storage device controller in a flexible manner by being able to receive chunks of the boot code from two separate locations, the host memory buffer (HMB) and the memory device, which may be a NAND device. Part of the boot code may be received from the HMB and another part of the boot code may be received from the memory device. If either the HMB or the memory device can deliver the chunks faster than the other, then the controller can receive the chunks from the faster location and periodically confirm the speed of delivery to ensure the boot code latency is optimized.

A computer booting apparatus includes a computer processor, a computer memory coupled to the computer processor, and a communication port coupled to the computer processor. The computer processor is configurable for operation in a host mode and a device mode. The host mode connects to an external computer processor and an external computer memory via the communication port, checks for a new image file or a revised image file stored in the external computer processor or the external computer memory, and loads the new image file or the revised image file into the computer memory. The device mode boots a device via the communication port using the new image file or the revised image file.

Accelerating segment metadata head scans for storage system controller failover, including: receiving, by a secondary storage unit corresponding to a primary storage unit, a request to store a data segment; storing the data segment and segment metadata at the head of the data segment; and storing, in a data structure, data indicating an erase block storing the segment metadata and indicating an offset in the erase block where the segment metadata is stored.

A method for method of setting up a processing system includes determining availability of user-provided platform information indicative of a first memory platform out of a plurality of memory platforms. In response to determining that the user-provided platform information is available at the first memory platform, a boot loader code is read from the first memory platform. In response to determining that the user-provided platform information is not available, test availability of the boot loader code in another memory platform of the plurality of memory platforms, and read the boot loader code from the another memory platform upon testing the availability of the boot loader code in the another memory platform.

An information handling system may detect an exception, create a hand-off block in an NVMe boot partition in an NVMe device during a pre-extensible firmware interface phase of a boot process, and update the hand-off block with information associated with the exception. The system may also load an exception table to the NVMe boot partition, wherein the exception table includes an index associated with the exception that is mapped to a vector associated with an exception handler, and load the exception handler to the NVMe boot partition, wherein the exception handler resolves the exception.

A system includes one or more data processors and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium containing instructions which, when executed on the one or more data processors, cause the one or more data processors to perform operations. The operations include receiving a modified basic input-output system (BIOS) setting using an application programming interface (API). The modified BIOS setting includes an attribute describing at least one extensible firmware interface (EFI) variable. The operations further include storing the modified BIOS setting in a future setting data structure in a baseboard management controller (BMC). The operations further include providing a current setting data structure stored in the BMC. The operations further include replacing at least a portion of the current setting data structure with the modified BIOS setting to provide a modified current setting data structure. The modified current setting data structure is then applied to the system.