Before the widespread adoption of virtualization and cloud platforms, there was a requirement to generate a standardized operating system build on physical servers, without the need to visit a data center and insert some form of installation media. PXE booting was created, as one of the common solutions to this requirement, and the name comes from the Pre-eXecution Environment (think of a tiny, minimal operating system) that is loaded so that an operating system installation can occur.
At a high level, when we talk about the PXE build of a given server, the following process is occurring:
- The server must be configured to use one (or all) of its network adapters for network booting. This is commonly a factory default setting for most new hardware.
- Upon power-up, the server brings up the network interfaces, and on each, in turn, attempts to contact a DHCP server...
