File system sharing (Windows shares, UNIX NFS and similar) are one thing storage device sharing at the lower level (mostly iSCSI these days, if you want to use standard networking) are another. I suspect the solution may well involve iSCSI. None of this is really new.
But there's third thing, and that's the capability to boot from the network. This capability has been around for like two decades on UNIX workstations, and around one decade even on well-equipped networked PCs, not limited to servers.
In PC world, de facto standard in this segment is Preboot Execution Environment, or PXE. When a machine is configured to attempt booting from the network, it attempts to acquire IP address and boot configuration information from a DHCP server. After this, it loads specified boot loader from a TFTP server. This is pretty much like any boot loader loading from the disk, but in this case, the boot loader has also an vendor-independent interface to the network through PXE interface. Whatever the boot loader does after this depends really on boot loader writers' imagination. All of this is very useful when you understand it properly; for instance, I have a system that reinstalls 80 Unix desktop machines from scratch with one short command.
What remains to be seen is if Apple has adopted PXE, or brewed its own "standard" for this purpose.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
File system sharing (Windows shares, UNIX NFS and similar) are one thing storage device sharing at the lower level (mostly iSCSI these days, if you want to use standard networking) are another. I suspect the solution may well involve iSCSI. None of this is really new.
But there's third thing, and that's the capability to boot from the network. This capability has been around for like two decades on UNIX workstations, and around one decade even on well-equipped networked PCs, not limited to servers.
In PC world, de facto standard in this segment is Preboot Execution Environment, or PXE. When a machine is configured to attempt booting from the network, it attempts to acquire IP address and boot configuration information from a DHCP server. After this, it loads specified boot loader from a TFTP server. This is pretty much like any boot loader loading from the disk, but in this case, the boot loader has also an vendor-independent interface to the network through PXE interface. Whatever the boot loader does after this depends really on boot loader writers' imagination. All of this is very useful when you understand it properly; for instance, I have a system that reinstalls 80 Unix desktop machines from scratch with one short command.
What remains to be seen is if Apple has adopted PXE, or brewed its own "standard" for this purpose.