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Advantages of Booting from the Network Booting from the network is not a new concept. There have been several other methods: Novell has offered remote booting and IBM has supported RPL, both since the mid 1980s. In the past, network booting was largely limited to diskless devices such as thin clients and dedicated systems. However, that's no longer the case. PXE has standardized the process. Now software and hardware vendors can all support the same architecture, offering a wider range of applications. There are several advantages and uses for network booting:
The two main uses of network booting today are for installing an OS in a brand new client PC that has no operating system, (or re-installing in a client PC where the operating system has failed), and booting into a guaranteed "clean" system. By booting a brand new system or a defective-OS system from the network, you can install a new OS and/or applications without visiting each client PC with a stack of installation CDs. Setting up a new client PC is as simple as connecting it to the network and powering it on. You can setup your servers to automatically detect the new clients and start installing the new software. This can dramatically reduce administration time. The administrator no longer has to physically visit to reinstall the software when a user's computer crashes. A network boot does the re-install. It may now be more efficient to simply reinstall all the user's software than to try to determine the problem with the existing installation. When you boot from the network, you get a guaranteed "clean" boot, with no boot-time viruses or user-modified files. The system boot files are stored on the server where they are protected from infection. You can also use the network boot to scan for viruses, ensuring that the local hard drive is clean before you boot from it. This is called a pre-OS boot. |