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Diskless infrastructure in beta (System Transparency: stboot) (2022)

mullvad.net

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Re: Diskless infrastructure in beta (System Transparency: stboot) (2022)

#11

Post by input_sh »

ronsor wrote: post #5
RVRX wrote: post #3

Mullvad offers flat rate $5 (no matter 1 month or 12 months or 120 months) and never have any sales so I'm surprised to see these[1] prepaid amazon cards ARE offering discounts: 12mo @ $4.75/mo & 6mo @ $4.83/mo esp. when these are /physical/ code-card purchases [1] https://www.amazon.com/Mullvad-VPN-Devices-Protect-Security/...

Probably bought with stolen credit cards and being resold.

Nope, those scratch cards are listed on their website. They're legit: https://mullvad.net/en/help/partnerships-and-resellers/

Re: Diskless infrastructure in beta (System Transparency: stboot) (2022)

#12

Post by kevinastone »

dang wrote: post #8
crazygringo wrote: post #2

Wow, I had no idea "diskless infrastructure" was even a thing. Easy to imagine in theory, but this is the first time I'm hearing about it in practice, and it makes total sense in this case. It makes me curious if there are any other real-world use cases for diskless. Are there any customers who would benefit from such a configuration from major cloud providers? E.g. a diskless EC2 instance type that ran off of a RAM…

Thanks - we've changed the URL to the article they link to about that. Submitted URL was https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2022/12/30/review-of-2022/ , which is a list, and that item looks like the most interesting thing on this list. (see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... for why we do this sometimes)

It probably then deserves a `(2022)` since that announcement was just over a year ago.

Re: Diskless infrastructure in beta (System Transparency: stboot) (2022)

#17

Post by mprovost »

crazygringo wrote: post #2

Wow, I had no idea "diskless infrastructure" was even a thing. Easy to imagine in theory, but this is the first time I'm hearing about it in practice, and it makes total sense in this case. It makes me curious if there are any other real-world use cases for diskless. Are there any customers who would benefit from such a configuration from major cloud providers? E.g. a diskless EC2 instance type that ran off of a RAM…

It used to be pretty common (in the late 1980s) to run Sun workstations without hard disks, all booting off an NFS server. But then disks got cheap... I always set up a boot server hosting a bunch of BSD/Linux images so I could install an OS remotely (to a local disk) without running around with a CD or USB stick.

Re: Diskless infrastructure in beta (System Transparency: stboot) (2022)

#18

Post by ilyt »

crazygringo wrote: post #2

Wow, I had no idea "diskless infrastructure" was even a thing. Easy to imagine in theory, but this is the first time I'm hearing about it in practice, and it makes total sense in this case. It makes me curious if there are any other real-world use cases for diskless. Are there any customers who would benefit from such a configuration from major cloud providers? E.g. a diskless EC2 instance type that ran off of a RAM…

Various flavours of diskless booting have been there since decades.

Simple example - thin client that boots off readonly NFS and just mounts user dir when they log in. Or one step further and have image with remote desktop software and nothing else.

More complex one - storage server that boots over network so you don't have to manage any OS install on disks and can use full capacity of drives for storage

Re: Diskless infrastructure in beta (System Transparency: stboot) (2022)

#19

Post by dang »

kevinastone wrote: post #12
dang wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks - we've changed the URL to the article they link to about that. Submitted URL was https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2022/12/30/review-of-2022/ , which is a list, and that item looks like the most interesting thing on this list. (see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... for why we do this sometimes)

It probably then deserves a `(2022)` since that announcement was just over a year ago.

Oh crap - I missed that. Thanks! added now.

If there's a better URL, we can change it again. I just don't think year-in-review laundry lists make for very good discussion, because inevitably they produce generic referendum-style threads about the company or project.

Re: Diskless infrastructure in beta (System Transparency: stboot) (2022)

#20

Post by jeffbee »

crazygringo wrote: post #2

Wow, I had no idea "diskless infrastructure" was even a thing. Easy to imagine in theory, but this is the first time I'm hearing about it in practice, and it makes total sense in this case. It makes me curious if there are any other real-world use cases for diskless. Are there any customers who would benefit from such a configuration from major cloud providers? E.g. a diskless EC2 instance type that ran off of a RAM…

GCE has been offering diskless instances since always, even if customers did not realize it. They explicitly describe some instance types as "diskless" these days.
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