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Diskless Remote Boot in Linux
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<h2 id="features">Features</h2> <p>DRBL excels in two main categories. </p><p>Disk Cloning </p><p><a href="/facts/Clonezilla/IHU6dqVY">Clonezilla</a> (packaged with DRBL) uses <a href="/facts/Partimage/AppaSp0m">Partimage</a> to avoid copying free space, and <a href="/facts/Gzip/H23uqvyx">gzip</a> to compress Hard Disk images. The stored image can then be restored to multiple machines simultaneously using <a href="/facts/Multicast/D9IspSfl">multicast</a> packets, thus greatly reducing the time it takes to image large numbers of computers. The DRBL Live CD allows you to do all of this without actually installing anything on any of the machines, by simply booting one machine (the server) from the CD, and <a href="/facts/Preboot_Execution_Environment/k6uV4fwT">PXE</a> booting the rest of the machines. </p><p>Diskless node </p><p>A diskless node is an excellent way to make use of old hardware. Using old hardware as <a href="/facts/Thin_clients/GtBdBho5">thin clients</a> is a good solution, but has some disadvantages that a <a href="/facts/Diskless_node/fWUz9KyF">diskless node</a> can make up for. </p> <ul><li>Streaming audio/video - A <a href="/facts/Terminal_server/62B9shGQ">terminal server</a> must decompress, recompress, and send video over the network to the client. A diskless node does all decompression locally, and can make use of any graphics hardware capabilities on the local machine.</li> <li>Software that requires real-time input - Since all input at a <a href="/facts/Thin_client/GtBdBho5">thin client</a> is sent over the network before it is registered by the operating system, there can be substantial delay. This is a major problem in software that requires real-time input (i.e. <a href="/facts/Video_games/vmTdNASJ">video games</a>). Diskless nodes run the software locally, and as such, do not have this problem.</li></ul> <p>DRBL allows one to set up multiple <a href="/facts/Diskless_node/fWUz9KyF">diskless nodes</a> with relative ease. </p> <h2 id="inner-workings">Inner workings</h2> <p>The client computer is set to boot from the network card using PXE or Etherboot. The client requests an IP address, and tftp image to boot from, both are provided by the DRBL server. The client boots the <a href="/facts/Initrd/St5yDjAz">initial RAM disk</a> provided by the DRBL server via tftp, and proceeds to mount an <a href="/facts/Network_File_System/jWRRALVo">nfs</a> share (also provided by the DRBL server) as its root (/) partition. From there, the client boots either the linux distribution on which the DRBL server is installed, Clonezilla, or an installer for various Linux distributions, depending on how that particular client was configured on the DRBL server. </p><p>All system resources reside on the local machine except storage, which resides on the DRBL server. </p> <h2 id="system-recommendations">System recommendations</h2> <p>The main bottleneck in a DRBL installation is between the storage on the DRBL server, and the client workstation. Fast storage on the server (RAID), and a fast network (Gigabit Ethernet), are ideal in this type of environment. </p> <h2 id="external-resources">External resources</h2> <ul><li><a href="http://drbl.sourceforge.net/">DRBL</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.clonezilla.org/">Clonezilla</a></li></ul>