bootp client

[alienkidmj12]

a bootp client, so the qnap can be used as an operating system installer over the network, with menu, so you can select which image you would like to install, ie windows xp, windows 7 etc.

[schumaku]

More a bootp server - respective a bootp extension of the DHCPD, as we dont intend to install or run Windows on the NAS I'd guess.

Shouldn't be Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) be added in the same loop then?

-Kurt.

[Sabaoth]

That would be a pretty awsome feature. +1 from me

[ansgeier]

+1 from me.

I stumbled across this thread while searching for a solution that allows us to boot Mac OS X machines from iSCSI disks hosted on a Qnap NAS.

As far as I understood how bootp works, the a DHCP server points the booting machine to a disk image on the server to boot from. It would be fantastic, if that boot image could be the actual disk image that contains the iSCSI disk data! This way the client can boot from the bootp image (read-only) and subsequently mount it (read/write) using a software iSCSI initiator.

The issue is there are no iSCSI initiator HBAs (cards) yet for Macs OS X. As these cards are very expensive, a software-based solution would also be great for Windows and Linux.

I don't know if the proposed solution would work with large disks (80 GB?), nor if it would work at all, but I believe its worth doing some experiements, because -- Marketing dept. listen! -- that would turn the Qnap NAS into a real iSCSI SAN that fully supports disk-less client PCs! That's the dream of all people looking for true storage consolidation.