SMALL TREE COMUNICATIONS FACILITATES NETBOOT CAPABILITY FOR MAC OS X USERS
Ideal Feature for Security-Conscious Organizations
CHIPPEWA VALLEY, WI, August 6, 2007 — Small Tree Communications, a leader
in networking and storage solutions, has recently completed work on new
firmware for its single port optical Gigabit adapters that will allow users
to NetBoot Apple systems that use Open Firmware Standard (this includes all
of Apple’s Power PC systems). With NetBoot, users can boot from the network
rather than from a local disk.
“Apple supports NetBoot today over their built in copper Ethernet
interfaces,” stated Corky Seeber, president of Small Tree Communications.
“With Small Tree’s new firmware, these same systems can be made to boot
over the optical networks that are popular at military, law enforcement and
national lab installations. In addition to booting the default NetBoot
image, Small Tree’s cards are fully compatible with the Startup Disk tool.
This allows users to select multiple NetBoot images and gives the
flexibility to maintain several images for different system types. All of
Small Tree’s PCI Express cards are compatible with Apple’s Intel based
systems for remote boot using EFI.”
The NetBoot capability in Mac OS X’s server permits multiple Mac systems to
boot from a single server-based disk image, instead of from their internal
hard drive. This enables consumers to create a standard configuration and
use it on all of the desktop systems in a department or classroom, or host
multiple images customized for different workgroups. Users can create
server configurations and run all of their servers from one image.
Revising the disk image on the NetBoot server will automatically update all
the NetBoot configured systems the next time they restart. In addition,
users can copy a directory server configuration to all clients using the
same system image. For security-conscious organizations, NetBoot permits
Mac computers to boot “disklessly” — without needing to read from or write
to the computer’s local drive.
“A client can boot from our card and come up diskless,” remarked Seeber.
“To support this feature we developed special open firmware drivers for our
optical products. Standard Ethernet cards, including copper, won’t do this.
The only other NetBoot option for customers is to use Apple’s internal
ports.”
About Small Tree Communications
Small Tree is dedicated to providing and supporting a complete portfolio of
high performance Ethernet-based networking and storage solutions for Apple
Mac OS X customers. Small Tree’s team of networking and kernel developers
has extensive experience in high performance computing and knows how to
meet the demanding application requirements of Mac customers. Small Tree
also provides contracted programming services for the Department of
Defense. For more information about the company and its products, please
call 1-866-STC4MAC, or visit (http://www.small-tree.com/).