Installing linux onto a network drive to avoid shrinking troubles

[UlyssesOfEpirus]

When a VM boots the bios has the option of booting off a network drive.

1. Can this drive be an HGFS drive?

2. If yes, how do I install linux onto this network drive?

3. If not, how do I install linux onto a network drive on another physical computer that the VM sees at boot time (bridged networking)?

4. Does the host filing system have to be a linux one or ntfs is fine too since it's only accessed over the network?

5. Is freeBSD an option instead of linux for all of the above?

I want to boot VM's like this in the hope that this way they do not suffer from the need to shrink their drives every now and then. Ie, no waste of space if you forget to shrink, no waste of time when you do shrink, just a little increase in latency I guess.

[UlyssesOfEpirus]

Update: what about a liveCD to get started, instead of bios's support for network boot? And then continue the boot using the contents of a HGFS network drive? Might this be simpler?

[kjb007]

The network boot option is looking for a PXE server that the machine will use to provide its boot image, not what you are trying to do exactly.

If you create a workstation image, you can use a network drive,but when you create a disk, make sure you do not select to allocate all space immediately. That way, you don't have to worry about decreasing drive size, as it will be thin to begin with.

vExpert

VMware Communities Moderator

vmwise.com / @vmwise

-KjB

[WoodyZ]

Not counting non-persistent disks the only way to avoid having to occasionally shrink a disk is to preallocate it so it doesn't matter from where it's running if it's a sparse disk it's going to grow and at some point you''ll need to shrink it to regain Host disk space.

[UlyssesOfEpirus]

Thanks everyone.

You said:"If you create a workstation image, you can use a network drive". By workstation image here, do you mean a .vmdk file? If yes, I do not see any benefit in putting the .vmdk on a network drive, it still needs shrinking now and then. And I want to keep my changes so non-persistent is not an option, and I want to economize on space so pre-allocated is not an option either.

Can a PXE Server be a VM with raw access to a physical drive? If this VM provides the boot image for each PXE client VM, can't it also provide some space for the client VM to keep its data?