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ZfD 3.2 Preboot Services utilizes the Preboot Execution Environment (PXE), an industry-standard protocol that allows a workstation to boot up and execute a program from the network before the workstation operating system starts. The PXE environment is loaded from either the Network Interface Card (NIC) in flash or ROM, or in the same memory as the system BIOS.
By using Preboot Services, you can put an image on a workstation even if the workstation's hard disk is blank. You do not need to install a Linux* imaging partition on the workstation. Before you can use Preboot Services, make sure that you have installed the new Imaging and PXE Support components of ZfD 3.2 on your server.
When a PXE-enabled workstation is booted, it looks for the server where Preboot Services is installed. After using DHCP to obtain IP information, it checks the Preboot Services Transaction Server to see if there is any imaging work to do. If there is imaging work to do, it downloads the Linux imaging environment from the server so that the workstation can be booted to Linux. Then the image is downloaded to the workstation. If there is no imaging work to do, these three files are not downloaded and the workstation proceeds to boot to its operating system.
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