iPXE - The Versatile Network Boot Loader 
by Schlomo Schapiro (ImmobilienScout24)
Thursday, 08.05.2014, Stage D, 18:30-19:00 Uhr
Track: Booting
Everybody with more than a few servers is using PXE boot to install the servers with an Operating System. In the Open Source world, there are currently 2 active PXE boot loaders: PXELINUX (from the SYSLINUX project) and iPXE.
While PXELINUX is shipped (in an outdated version) with every Linux distro, iPXE is a hidden gem. It can do most of what PXELINUX does without needing extra add ons and some more: * boot from a web server via HTTP * boot from an iSCSI SAN * boot from a Fibre Channel SAN via FCoE * boot from an AoE SAN * boot from a wireless network * boot from a wide-area network * boot from an Infiniband network * control the boot process with a scripting language
iPXE is free, open-source software licensed under the GNU GPL (with some portions under GPL-compatible licences), and is included in products from several network card manufacturers and OEMs.
This talk gives an introduction to iPXE, the development model of the open source project and provides insights into the network boot automation at ImmobilienScout24.
About the author Schlomo Schapiro:
Schlomo Schapiro works as a Systems Architect and Open Source Evangelist at ImmobilienScout24, the leading German real estate market place. Core areas of interest are open source solutions and web operations.
The ImmobilienScout24 web platform is based on Linux, Apache, Tomcat and open standards. We are currently creating a new deployment and management solution for our data center based on RPM packages. The solution is written in Python and Bash and published at http://yadt-project.org.
Schlomo maintains several successful open source projects and is a regular speaker at various conferences. Schlomo is a strong DevOps and web operations advocate and writes regularly for German IT magazines and his BLOG (http://blog.schlomo.schapiro.org). See the homepage on http://www.schapiro.org/schlomo or the profile on http://go.schapiro.org/schlomo for more information.