Open Source Project Allows Diskless Boot from Network for Windows

In association with the etherboot/gPXE project, an open source Windows driver for ATA over Ethernet (AoE) has been released today. In combination with gPXE, this allows a diskless boot of a Windows operating system from a block device over the local ethernet (what is commonly called boot from SAN). This should provide similar functionality previously provided by emBoot (which used iSCSI).

A full deployment wouldn't be for the weak of heart as the software is not a point and click install.


Information about AoE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ata_over_ethernet
Information about gPXE: http://www.etherboot.org/wiki/howtos
AoE Driver can be found here: http://www.winaoe.org/

Nice, but not very useful for gaming. With WoW its important to be able to load textures quickly, doing this over ethernet is hardly ideal ;-)

Hmm, I wonder. If you had enough RAM, you could cache client side, but yeah, the zoning into orgrimmar might not be too fun the first time. ;)