stevemarfisi

You mentioned you are using iSCSI boot....most iSCSI targets only allow exclusive mode access (one initiator to one LUN) to their targets. The only ways around this: 1. Some iSCSI targets allow multiple initiator (anonymous) access to their targets. 2. Ensure that the 2nd boot client is passing in the same initiator name as that of the first. Steve

To make this work, you will need a file redirector / filter to force those writes to RAM. Citrix PVS can do that, as can Double-Take Flex. I do not know of any other way to do this. Redirecting writes to RAM can pose a lot of issues - I've seen them a lot over the last 5 years of doing diskless boot of Windows....basically, unless you have an obscene amount of RAM, you will consume all of your RAM quite quickly and lock up your system. There are 3rd party utils that can be used to flush RAM, but I am not aware of the consequences of using a tool like that in this case. Are you looking for the peformance that a RAM cache will offer? or more focused on obtaining a read-only hard drive that returns to pristine state at every reboot? Open source (diskless) iSCSI boot or ATA boot is not there yet (via gPXE) - that is, there are no pieces on the storage side there to facilitate RAM or read-only VHD boot. One other commercial option to check - ccboot - seems like it can do this. Steve Marfisi Double-Take Software