[gPXE] Booting a physical machine using a virtual image and gPXE

[Gene Cumm]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 14:42, Clive Eisen <clive at hildebrand.co.uk> wrote:
> um unless I have really mis understood your question then NO
> A given image is for a given hypervisor - gPXE or indeed iPXE is not a
> hypervisor
> Boot the hypervisor then boot the image
> --
> Clive
> On 7 Apr 2011, at 19:32, Swapnesh Chaubal wrote:
>
> Hey Folks,
>
> I am working on a project in which I would like to boot physical machines
> using virtual images stored on a server. I understand that we can use gPXE
> to boot ISO images over the network, and to boot Virtual Machine
> Hyper-visors like KVM/VirtualBox using gPXE, however, can we use gPXE to
> boot a physical machine using a .vmdk/.vhd (or any other format) virtual
> image?

http://erwan.l.free.fr/iscsi/

It appears that you could present a .vmdk/.vhd as an iSCSI target however

1) You'd need to reconfigure the OS in the disk image to know to
attach to the iSCSI target, almost defeating the purpose of the VM
image file when used with a hypervisor.

2) If your OS happens to be Windows, it will likely detect a huge
change in hardware and require activation again, likely preventing you
from running it as a VM again.

-- 
-Gene