PXE over WAN, how to do this?

[Jari]

Hello Dear Helpers,         (sorry for my bad English grammar )

My name is Jari and I am an intern in a computer store.
In this store we obviously build PC's en repair them for costumors.
We also do memtest this means we test the hardware with software from USB. This takes hours and we do this overnight.

We made a PXE and tft server where we can Lan boot a PC/ Laptop and choose the memtest options like memorie test or harddisk test etc.
We also have the option, when its finished the pc will shutdown. And we get a rapport with results, this all works in our main store.

We would like other store's of our company to be able to do the same. My question:
Are we able to boot Pc's/ Laptops from other store's over WAN so they can use this aswell. if yes
how do we do this.

Every store has its own database do we have to do something with this or the router?

I would like your help for any ideas, i am not a pro but i will try to understand XD



 

[DaveLembke]

I would have each store having its own PXE service.

Booting a system with PXE and installing an OS to a system will be much faster on the local LAN vs through a network bridge tunnel.

The biggest issue you will have if you were to share the PXE service with other locations is bandwidth through the tunnel and latency through all the hops between the stores, as well as you would need a network that is isolated from the main network in order for this to work because the PXE service would have to be on one network of which tunnels acting like a network bridge to the other locations would be required to pull it off with all locations contacting the main stores PXE server service.

PXE for multiple locations would work best to also be able to perform multiple system builds at the same time through individual local LAN servers with PXE service, so that the sites are not competing for the network bandwidth as well as the Storage controllers bandwidth where the images are located and served up from.

I use to support a food store chain that had 7 locations and we performed all the PXE RIS installations of Windows through a central location. Then transported the computers to the locations that needed them. If the distance was too far between locations we could have easily had multiple PXE RIS servers. Additionally, I wasnt limited to only 1 build at a time through RIS, I was able to once tell 20 workstations to boot from PXE the RIS service and then tell them to all hit the RIS Server at the same time. I then went out to lunch and when I came back an hour later they were all ready for the remainder of their custom configuration for the end users.

[Jari]

Thanks for the tip my dude.