We've been experiencing some difficulty with NetBooting. At one site, booting with N or option key and selecting the Netboot image would result in attempting to boot the the image but then default to the internal HD. This started happening with the new 10.7.x clients out of box. We then added a number of IP helpers to the multiple subnets and restarted the net boot services and servers and it appeared to help with the issue. At another site (where 2 net boot servers are present), we seem to only be able net boot may ~20 clients if we are lucky. After booting the ~20 clients, the other computers will not net boot. The first bunch of imaging that we did could do 48 at one time. Anyone experiencing issues with the amount of net boot clients that can be started at one time?
Limited amount of NetBoot Clients
+15
+9I have seen this issue with new MacBook Pros right out of box. I spent a day or two troubleshooting my network and netboot setup, trying to figure out what broke or changed.
From what I can tell, the issue is caused by something in the firmware on the new computers. I can netboot 36 2008 iMacs simultaneously, but I can only netboot about 15 2011 MBPs at a time, and I have to boot them one at a time or they give up and select their internal drives. From observing the globes on the screens of these different types of computers it seems the newer computers give up on netbooting after only a few seconds of searching, but the old computers will search endlessly until it can successfully netboot.
I wish I had an answer, but I'm pretty sure only an EFI Firmware update can solve this one.
+15I just checked to see if the Airs needed firmware. I don't see the update in SW update app. I tried to download one (v2.4) and when I tried to run it it said that it was not supported on the model. I have mid 2011 MBAs. Thanks for the info...Will keep that in mind for the other computers
+33It it boots some (or any) to netboot, then it likely isn't a network issue. Are you using MultiCast? If you are, you might want to try unicast, or vis-versa just to see.
My guess from past experience is that something is eating up more resources on the netboot server with the new clients which is what's killing the larger numbers. For netboot, there usually is no such thing as too much RAM in the server. What are your server-side specs? Is this the appliance or an actual Apple server?
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