How to Boot your Applications with no Physical or Network Storage! Great for Route Servers and Hypervisors...
When you strip back a computer, 4 main components are necessary: RAM, CPU, Hard Disk and Power Supply. Just these components are needed for a functional server. These types of servers are used with storage area networks, where there are numerous hard disks for storage. The purpose of these diskless servers is to be used as the compute nodes or the frontend servers. This allows the compute nodes to be rapidly deployed without needing to deal with individual configurations per server.
The difference between the regular and diskless servers is the presence of that hard disk component. A diskless server has many benefits over one with a hard disk:
1) It is easier to deploy a network, by using machine images to save time on installation
2) All your servers are standardised and congruent.
3) A master image is one image that needs to be maintained, and when the server reboots, that is the image that will be used.
The server loads the master image into ram by using a RAMDisk. This RAMDisk is a temporary storage drive which runs at the same speed as the RAM, which is very fast.
The server is still able to store data by utilising the installed RAM, meaning processing this data and program deployment is almost instantaneous. Combined with the time saved by using a machine image, running a server has never been faster!
There are many ways a Diskless Server can be utilised for different applications, such as Proxmox and Diskless Routers.
Application of a Diskless Router
One example of a diskless application includes the Diskless Router which can be a Virtual Machine (VM). This VM can also be deployed on top of a physical diskless hardware node such as a diskless hypervisor including Proxmox. openQRM will still monitor and operate it as if the Diskless Router was physical hardware.
Overview of using a Diskless Router
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