/dev/SDB: Software Defined Boot -- A novel standard for diskless booting anywhere and everywhere
Aditya Mitra, Hamza Haroon, Amaan Rais Shah, Mohammad Elham Rasooli, Bogdan Itsam Dorantes Nikolaev, Tuğçe Ballı
TL;DR
The paper addresses the need for secure, diskless booting of workstations from anywhere with per-user OS provisioning. It proposes a two-module architecture comprising a hardware module that handles pre-boot network provisioning and iPXE-based chain loading, and a cloud module that authenticates users and supplies OS images for in-memory boot. The key contributions are the end-to-end architecture, OS definition and user-management workflow, and a simulation-based validation showing rapid boot times and comprehensive authentication logging. This approach enables policy-driven, remote OS provisioning while reducing hardware redundancy and improving security for distributed enterprise environments.
Abstract
A computer is nothing but a device that processes the instructions supplied to it. However, as computers evolved, the instructions or codes started to be more complicated. As computers started to be used by non-technical people, it became imperative that the users be able to use the machine without having underlying knowledge of the code or the hardware. And operating system became the backbone for translating the inputs from the user to actual operation on the hardware. With the increasing complexity and the choices of operating system, it became clear that different groups of people, especially in an enterprise scenario, required different operating systems. Installing them all on a single machine, for shared computers became a difficult task, giving rise to network-based booting. But network-based booting was confined to only wired connectivity, keeping it restricted to very small geographical areas. The proposed system, /dev/SDB, is aimed at creating a standard where any user, anyone on the globe, can access the operating system authorized to them without having to be on the corporate network. It aims to offer the same over Wi-Fi as well as cellular connectivity, ensuring employees can truly work from anywhere, while following the policies for operating systems and without redundant hardware.