Alright, I want some network guru’s advice for this; having my O.S (for 2 or more desktops) stored on a server on my LAN, connected via a gigabit network connection.
The reason? Honestly, there is no practical reason to do this. I feel like it would be a cool thing to do, and would teach me a bit of networking.
So, should I do it? Why, or why not? What sort of issues will I experience by having my whole O.S booted from a network drive?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that it's called an application server, a lot of schools use that system. Never actually set one up but I've heard that they're a pain in the ass to set up, but it's a great project nonetheless.
Did Google tell you anything?
So you want to use a desktop computer, but have barebone and then when it boots, boot it to an operating system off a server? Just seeing if I understand what you mean here.
One thing that is getting more common in enterprise environments is virtualised desktops, which is quite similar to what you're trying to do. Could be worth having a look into it if you are interested in this sort of thing.
You can do that with VDI, which is the good expensive method, or with terminal services and RDP, which is the old terrible method (but free-ish)
Yeah you can do it. You need a PXE server which will store the hard drive image or boot media and then configure your network and computer to allow for network booting. Have a search for how to set up PXE and you should be able to work it out.
My school system doesn't (TDSB). They have individual user accounts stored on each computer, and a central server (located inside the school (I've seen it and taken a few quick pics before getting caught)) incase you want to access files outside school/on other computers on the school network. If you store a file on the computer, it stays on that computer.
I skimmed through this: http://www.howtogeek.com/57601/what-is-network-booting-pxe-and-how-can-you-use-it/
and it seems to be only teaching me how to create a bootable ISO, which I don't want to do.
Correct. Really don't want any storage drives in the computer, and if I am forced to (for some games), I'll install some cheap 120GB SSD inside my system.
Don't want to do that. My server is not powerful enough to do that, plus, I just want my server to house all of my data, and do very little processing (it supports around 10 3.5" HDD's in its current config).
I'll take a look at that at a later date. Thanks! :D
You could set it to auto network boot! You might already know a bit about it but basically you just create a windows image, and then once your computer boots up it runs that image. In the image you can put all the applications it in.
Only issue I see is sometimes it can take a bit of time to boot up, like a good few minutes or so, but depends how much stuff you have in the image I guess! Plus I'm not too about saving and configs and all that stuff without a domain, but you could always try have a go and see what happens, could be a good project to attempt. I'd be interested to hear how it goes!
computeraudiophile.com/f10-music-servers/diskless-windows-10-pc-setup-procedure-27363/
backreference.org/2013/12/23/diskless-iscsi-boot-with-pxe-howto/
I tried this a while back when working in a computer retailer's tech department, the idea was to boot a diagnostic system through the network from a server. I think the program you're looking for is CCBoot.
Essentially you create a VM and load it into CCBoot and your desktop loads to ram via the network.