PXE boot Windows from a NAS? (and even using a net share for a swapfile?)

[Twice_Shy]

Related to my two other big posts, just decided it deserves it's own topic to avoid confusion and because this is very specific and possibly of interest to others (for future searches, if good info ends up in this thread) because this is the focus on the NAS/performance side of the question.

Super short version - I would like to explore "diskless workstations" or/and various levels of shared network load if not completely diskless. Like maybe each computer has no HD but does have a small SSD that still isn't big enough to store ALL data so it's used when concerned about performance bottlenecks - i'd love to hear if anyone has any experiences, comments, or resources. Or even ways of installing software to a network share - so if the local SSD isn't very big, you put the main multigig programs on the NAS, even if it boots without the NAS fine. (and yes I know it would be broken without the network attached, if those programs arent needed then that's okay though)

I would like to think that the 120MB/sec that gigabit ethernet is capable of should be about as fast as many recent local hard drives, unless TCP/IP or network file system latency makes them not work the same. Obviously multiple computers could bottleneck it, but lets start simple - one client, one NAS, gigabit ethernet. Wont even mention two unless that can work even if the ultimate plan is 2+. The most demanding 'hard drive thrashing' uses I can think of are basically setting the swapfile there, things like Photoshop scratch disks, video processing software, large databases larger than RAM, video transcoding, creation of huge data PARity sets via MultiPar, etc.

The eventual idea is that one high performance NAS probably costs less to set up than multiple PC's with redundant local high performance DAS.

If that is not the case, i'd still like to explore "hybrid" options that simply reduce the management needs. Ie one master PXE boot image loaded from the NAS to at least get to a desktop, so only one thing to update, patch, and save. That by itself is worth doing with multiple computers.

Then maybe installing personalized software to network shares on top of that. While using small but fast local SSD as the scratch disk/swapfile/virtual RAM without any overhead of alot of software installs taking up half it's space, and no individual installs to manage at least for the core operating system and basic setup.


Who else has done similar things and is performance of Gigabit Ethernet likely to be a limiting factor if the NAS can keep up? If it is a limiting factor, is faster networking or/and storage connections a solution or will overhead still be an issue?

 

[Mokers]

It could be possible. But most things I have seen have booting PXE as a way of installing the OS, not really sharing resources. For what you are looking at, it would be more of a VDI solution these days. More flexible, larger collection of endpoints it will work with.

 

[TLeTourneau]

Boot to network storage with no local storage requires some form of initiator such as an ethernet adapter with an integrated iSCSI initiator or a fiber channel adaptor that will connect to a LUN. That is if I understand what you are asking.

Sent from my SM-T817V using Tapatalk

 

[Cake]

I was also interested in this a while back, I noticed others have already done this with Internet cafe's. They can boot all the computers at once with a WOL ping (if they choose), and the stations would load from network (pxe). I thought it was a good idea, perhaps the network image is some kind of live cd to prevent malicious users from installing software and stuff. I bet it has gotten a whole lot better with the newer SSDs that can read/write at insane speeds. I could see public libraries benefiting from something like this too.

 

[Twice_Shy]

It could be possible. But most things I have seen have booting PXE as a way of installing the OS, not really sharing resources. For what you are looking at, it would be more of a VDI solution these days. More flexible, larger collection of endpoints it will work with.

I just had to type "what is VDI" into google. See, I don't know all the acronyms yet but like I said in my other thread, what else do I need to learn. Yes looking at virtual desktop options. Or things similar to virtual desktop options. Right now I dont know what I dont know and am trying to fix that.


For how i've seen there seems to be four possible ways to set things up:

1) Dedicated hard drives and installs. (regularily drive imaged to a central server NAS to prevent corruption, even if installing and updates are still probably a hassle)

2) Multiseat configurations, multiple users and their apps running on the same PC. I don't know nearly as much about this (or if I need to) but it sounds less secure but also less of a bottleneck vs VM.

3) Full desktop virtualization like VMware. Concern here is whether a 1gig ethernet can run virtual machines fine if they are running applications that thrash hard drives, like Adobe CC working on huge video files larger than ram, or even "virtual swapfile" over the network.

4) Diskless boot systems. Runs the OS locally in RAM just with either no hard drive, or at least not for the OS. (maybe an SSD to avoid 'virtual ram' bottlenecks over the internet) This at least makes it more convenient to manage and if a computer has a problem its just replaced, if an OS gets corrupted its just rolled back, etc.

It may even be worth using more than one or even all four methods depending on the use. (if there is a fifth method please inform me as well/something I dont know about) Mostly i'm trying to consolidate some hardware for the convenience of not having to individually update, install, and reinstall when things go bad from a virus or malware. It would be nice if performance could improve or even total costs are less (ie an SSD shared among several machines so each one doesn't need it's own SSD, or a SAN with RAID that outperforms local storage over fiberchannel) simply because alot of this will be intermittent or widely varying workloads.

I've read at least some minor amount about things like Xen, Linux Terminal Server Project, Windows MultiPoint, VMware, and VirtualBox. (i'm aware those are not all equivalent solutions for equivalent problems, although i'm not yet sure what is best for what use case either) I'd like to know if there are others I should investigate or know about as other alternatives, or how much work each takes to set up in terms of cost/benefit analysis for different situations. (both time and money, going beyond just the 'free open source' there's also the issue of if something is hard to use vs automatic, if something scales up well to run 30 seats as well as it runs 3, if the cost-per-seat works out differently in different situations, etc)