1.1

Good Morning :)

> We have a clusters of machine and would like to setup network booting. At
> this time, we have to go to the data center and boot the machine manually.
> We would like to manage it as best as we could where we can save time and
> money. I heard network booting is a good way to go. I'm not sure how does
> network booting work, and also not sure if this is possible with Gentoo
> operating system. Sorry for the dumb questions, I am totally new to
> Networking.

We've got probably 500+ machines deployed in total using a network
boot environment at my work - http://www.bytemark.co.uk.  It's simple
enough, although some of the concepts can be a little hard to grasp
when you're just getting started; leads to interesting possibilities
as you can give customers access, a la
http://www.bytemark.co.uk/dhshell

    *  DHCP  - each range of IPs (subnet) needs to be able to
broadcast + obtain leases.
               This is easily accomplished with ip-helper-address, if
you're using Cisco ;)
               Saves running a DHCP server on every VLAN!

    *  TFTP  - something to dish up the kernels, something which has
the pxelinux.cfg tree.

When the systems boot, they will obtain a DHCP lease and you need to
configure the boxes to try and boot off their internal NICs before
trying local disks or CD-ROM drives.  Additional values are passed in
the DHCP lease to tell the boxes where the TFTP server is, you can
have simple menus via PXELINUX.

It's helpful to have console access (IP KVMs, serial lines) to
interface with all this.  It's also helpful to have PDUs which take
SNMP commands so you can cycle the boxes on demand, or IPMI / iLOM I
guess.

How you choose to boot the images from that point is up to you ;)
We've got things deployed so that network booting is there as a method
for installing servers, for rescuing data when required, for fixing
'common' problems like b0rked kernel upgrades and firewall rules gone
slightly awry.

Thus, you may have quite a lot of reconfiguration to do:

    *  Configure boxes via BIOS to boot off NICs
    *  Install hardware to ensure remote powercycle capability
    *  Install hardware to give you serial/console access.

I'd be happy to try and answer any specific questions you may have :)

Alex
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