How should I handle OS storage without disks? - eviltoast

As i’m at a point of increasing my actual 4 server count, how should I handle storing the OS of each server?

Problem: I have no money and I’m looking for a way to buy more servers without buying and taking care of new boot ssds.

The actual setup is that each server has their own 120/240gb ssd to boot from, and one of my servers is a NAS.

at first I thought of PXE persistent boot, but how would I assign each machine their own image is one of the problems…

I’ve found this post talking about Disk-less persistent PXE, but it’s 5 years old, it talks about SAN booting, but most people I’ve seen in this sub are against fiber-channel protocol, probably there’s a better way?

Without mentioning speed requirements (like a full-flash NAS or 10+gbit), Is it possible to add more servers, without purchasing a dedicated boot device for each one?

  • rweninger@alien.topB
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I am an advocate of FC Protocol. I love it. Much more then iSCSI. But I hate SAN Booting. It is a pain in the ass. And you need a Server to host the images. You have to build up a SAN Infrastructure. I guess 2 boot SSD’s are cheapter. 2x 64GB NVMe SSD with a PCIe Card or 2x 64GB SATA SSD’s cost next to nothing.