Chapter 11. Running a NetBoot Server

11. Running a NetBoot Server

At Macworld Expo 1999, then-interim CEO Steve Jobs rolled out a huge cart of 50 iMacs playing the same movie file without a single hard disk among them. He was introducing the first commercially available Mac OS X system, and all the iMacs started up from a single copy of an operating system being hosted by a Mac OS X Server. That's right: One of the first public demonstrations of the future technology to drive all new Apple computers was a Mac OS X Server running the NetBoot service.

A server running the NetBoot service shares disk image files that contain the system software. Client computers, when instructed, automatically find and start up from any one of these disk images across the network. On a fast server with Gigabit Ethernet, more than 50 clients can start up from one disk image. Once booted, a client acts like any other computer that has been started from a local volume. Any changes made while running the NetBoot client computer are not retained upon restart, ensuring consistent system software across all your computers.

This chapter deals with the setup, management, and maintenance of the NetBoot service on Mac OS X Server.