[gPXE] Can gPXE's network booting be classified as a VDI solution ?

[mwhelton at gmail.com]

No, not in the classic sense. SAN booting a diskless workstation, running  
on workstation hardware is technically a thick client, because it is more  
or less married to one specific piece of hardware. However, since you have  
storage consolidation, you could call it virtualized storage. It's not  
quite the same thing, but the management and backup used for SAN for  
servers can be used for Workstations...technologies such as SAN Block Level  
Replication (site-to-site sync) and block level de-duplication can save on  
storage costs. Remember for a moment that SAN storage tends to be  
dramatically more expensive than local workstation storage, but that  
doesn't mean it that SAN can't be cost effective if it is well-managed.  
Some of the advantages of SAN booting are near-instant access and  
replication of OS images of all kinds.

Best,

Matt


On Sep 2, 2010 6:11pm, The Mad One <biker6202002 at yahoo.fr> wrote:
> Hello to everyone,

> I'm working on my ACS thesis & I'm stuck on how to classify gPXE's  
> network booting in the way it is used by a solution like DRBL (Diskless  
> Remote Boot in Linux).

> I know it's a sort of "OS streaming" solution, but can OS streaming be  
> classified as a VDI solution ?
> [because in some manner it is virtualizing the hard drive of the desktop  
> computer, but the OS is running on bare metal (on that desktop computer)  
> not in a VM]

> VDI= Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

> Please, help me solve this dilemma.

> Thanks in advance,
> TheMadOne.









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