Debirf is a project which allows one to create an initrd image which
contains a complete Debian system.
We use debirf to create an image that we then boot from a single USB
stick. We use this to boot a fleet of machines which export iscsi
targets, so we don't have to waste a drive bay for the OS.
http://cmrg.fifthhorseman.net/wiki/debirf
For us, this solution works great, since there is absolutely NO wear on
the stick - the entire OS runs in memory. However, this does mean that
you would have to consider Debian rather than Ubuntu, or find a way to
make debirf work under Ubuntu.
As far as constructing the RAID sets, I would look into using larger
chunks. Our testing showed that in our environment where our requests
are small (of size around 1 - 2kb), large 1MB chunks gave the best
performance. Chunks of size 512kb were a close second in performance for us.
Booting over the network can create certain chicken-and-egg scenarios
which again depend on your environment :).
Cheers,
Iordan
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