Hello Erik, Fortunately, your questions have pretty straightforward answers.
> 1. Should I either use iSCSI or AoE? Which one is faster? (the machines > are on a local network) If speed is your primary concern, then all theory says that AoE is what you want. AoE uses Ethernet frames instead of TCP packets to communicate, which means that though it is not routable (confined to a single subnet, basically), there's no TCP/IP overhead. That said, I do not know how mature the driver for it is compared to the MS iSCSI initiator when it comes to NT6. It's entirely possible that what's true in theory is not true in practice. For what it's worth though, I've never heard someone say that iSCSI was too slow on a modern machine. > 2. Which iSCSI or AoE target software (for Windows) supports > non-persistent writes? Which one do you recommend? (either commercial > or free software) I'm not personally aware of any AoE target software for Windows. There is vblade on Linux, which works pretty well and will do copy on write on a per initiator basis (I think). For iSCSI, you have more choices. The most popular ones are Starwind and the target built into Windows Storage Server, I believe. I'm pretty sure that you can configure Starwind to auto-restore a target when an initiator disconnects, so that might be what you need. Doubletake bought emBoot a while back right after they released sanFly, which I thought was a really neat looking piece of software. It was a target aimed specifically at netbooting Windows, so it might be worth it to check out. Commercial iSCSI targets are not the most affordable thing unfortunately, as pretty much every iSCSI target vendor is convinced that if they can make their solution certified for vmware and cost less than $20k that it's a bargain.... So beware :-P > 3. I read that gPXE uses DHCP to determine how and what file to boot. Is > using a boot script significantly faster? An embedded boot script will definitely be fastest, but only really if you're burning gPXE into ROM. If you plan to chainload, using cached DHCP would probably be fastest. There was a thread on the list over this past week about that, though there was a small language barrier... Not sure if that was resolved or not. Might be best answered by a fellow list reader. > I know, many questions. But if you have an answer to at least one of > these questions I am very grateful. Not a problem! Questions are what the list is here for, after all ;-). Cheers, Andrew Bobulsky On Nov 13, 2010, at 5:09 AM, "Erik Loman" <e...@surfright.com> wrote: > Hello all, > > I am new to this mailing list and I have several questions. > > I saw a YouTube video (from Phoenix) were they show how to boot Windows > 7 in 10 seconds. I want to do that as well, but this time using a > diskless PC and boot from a remote SAN. I plan to use Intel Atom boards > with EFI bios that support Intel Rapid BIOS Boot to minimize bios boot > time (Intel D510MO). > > I have several questions: > > 1. Should I either use iSCSI or AoE? Which one is faster? (the machines > are on a local network) > > 2. Which iSCSI or AoE target software (for Windows) supports > non-persistent writes? Which one do you recommend? (either commercial > or free software) > > 3. I read that gPXE uses DHCP to determine how and what file to boot. Is > using a boot script significantly faster? > > I know, many questions. But if you have an answer to at least one of > these questions I am very grateful. > > Best regards, > Erik > > _______________________________________________ > gPXE mailing list > gPXE@etherboot.org > http://etherboot.org/mailman/listinfo/gpxe _______________________________________________ gPXE mailing list gPXE@etherboot.org http://etherboot.org/mailman/listinfo/gpxe
