Booting your Applications with No Storage
This solution runs the server on a diskless boot, meaning that the server requires no physical or network storage to operate. The servers (being physical or virtual) boot from a network image which is loaded into a ramdisk and operates perpetually from said ram drive.
This increases server performance as the ramdisk utilises the speed of the ram for the drive. Since the servers are booted from an image deployment is rapid for new servers.
NVF (Network Virtualisation Functions) and routers can operate with a slim image using only 2GB of ram which supports all standard network protocols. FRRouting (Free Range Routing) is our preferred routing stack running on the latest Debian version.
The benefits of a diskless boot is a much faster Physical & VM server and application deployment. Since the servers require no network or physical storage they are less susceptible to disk I/O outages, increasing resilience and uptime.
In 2011, OPENQRM AUSTRALIA worked closely with Moxrox, a Fiveways International brand, which operates a private data centre solution for key customers, and deployed a custom diskless cluster network solution.
The diagram (left) showcases a classic deployment solution which enables the separation of the data and control plan. When public access to Virtual Machines is performed those machines have no access to the control plane. We achieve this through the separation of the control and data planes which maintains security.
This solution utilised a diskless network boot, so no server data was actually stored on a local or network hard drive. This improved deployment and program execution speed and decreased susceptibility to data loss and server downtime
Commercial Diskless Solutions
openQRM has partnered with Proxmox to bring you a solution like no other. This solution includes the Proxmox image and the ATU plugin along with several others to run Proxmox VE on the openQRM platform.
The TMPFS Plugin is a storage plugin for Network-deployment. Deploys Physical Systems and Virtual Machines ‘in-Memory’. This plugin can be integrated into any openQRM deployment, making nearly any configuration run on a diskless boot. This plugin is included with a standard openQRM Enterprise licence.