Nov 022018
 

See previous article to understand why and what.

Previously we have created our differencing / child disks.

Lets first set our iscsi target with Starwind San Free by creating two targets and attaching one disk in each target.





Then lets boot our diskless computers over the network with TinyPXE Server.

We will use the below ipxe scripts (one for each network booting computer).
Replace ‘X’ below with the target number (1 or 2) on line 3 and 5.

#!ipxe
clear net0.dhcp/gateway:ipv4
set initiator-iqn iqn.2006-11.X
set keep-san 1
sanboot --keep iscsi:${next-server}:tcp:3260:0:iqn.2008-08.com.starwindsoftware:erwan-pc2-childX

And here we go, we have X diskless computers booted over the network using differencing disks on the iscsi target.

 Posted by at 19 h 23 min

  4 Responses to “Having fun with StarWind Virtual SAN Free and differencing virtual disks : article #3”

  1. […] –create the master / parent disk –create the differencing / child disks –boot diskless computers over the network using these child disks […]

  2. Many Thanks for this. I tried it out and it worked for me. An interesting script would be when the number of clients is unknown and the child disks are created or allocated in realtime. I am correct that this is something for booting via http and getting the the MAC address on the server and then either create a new disk or point it to that clients specfic boot file ?

    • Currently, i use the mac to call this or that script but this is rather static.
      With the latest TinyPXE Server version, you can use server side script to do it all on the fly :
      -if vhd exist, use it
      -if vhd does not exist, create it and use it

      Starwind SanFree (iscsi target) is a bit limited script wise but if you are full Microsoft, it gets much easier.

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