Hi There,
Got a request to quickly explain what vblade / AOE is about and how to use this GUI.
AOE details here.
One one side we have the target (you can see it as a server).
On the other side we have the initiator (you can see this as the client). Our initiator will boot on SAN thru AOE.
1/
On the target, launch the GUI and point to your bootable image (a disk image or an iso).
Choose your network card.
Leave the other options by default.
Push the execute button.
At this point, provided that you fullfilled the requirements (winpcap installed, cygwin1.dll & vblade.exe in the same folder), you should see a dos window in the background meaning you have your target ready & running.
2/
Now, since the idea is to boot on san, lets trigger a pxe server.
I use my own Tiny PXE server but others could do as well : find it here.
Boot filename should be ipxe-undionly.kpxe.
Tick 'filename if user-class = iPXE' and leave the text field empty,
In option 17 (root-path) field, put aoe:e0.0.
Click online and you are done there.
See attached screenshot.
3/
Now boot your initiator (could be a physical 2nd computer or a virtual machine) and if pxe is enabled as first boot device, you should see your computer boot on your disk image file served in vBlade, i.e boot on san.
Voila for a quick how to boot on san with vblade.
Note that this process is similar to boot over iscsi.
This quick how to does not explain how to create a bootable disk image nor how to inject the windows AOE drivers so that it boots fine.
Cheers,
Erwan