You can use a preboot execution environment (commonly known as PXE) to boot a virtual machine over a network. When you use PXE with a virtual machine, you can:

You use PXE with your virtual machine in conjunction with remote installation tools such as Windows 2000 Remote Installation Services or the Red Hat Linux 9.0 installer's PXE package. You can use Ghost or Altiris to stream an image of an already configured virtual disk to a new virtual machine.

Make sure the virtual machine has a virtual network adapter; one is installed by default. VMware supports PXE when the virtual machine is configured to use either the vmxnet or vlance virtual network adapter.

The virtual machine must have a virtual disk without a guest operating system installed.

When a virtual machine boots and there is no guest operating system installed, it proceeds to boot from devices (hard disk, CD-ROM drive, floppy drive and network adapter) in the order in which they occur in the boot sequence specified in the virtual machine's BIOS. If you plan to use PXE with a virtual machine, it is a good idea to put the network adapter at the top of the boot order. When the virtual machine first boots, press F2 to enter the virtual machine's BIOS and change the boot order there.

As the virtual machine boots from the network adapter, it tries to connect to a DHCP server. The DHCP server provides the virtual machine with an IP address and a list of any PXE servers available on the network. After the virtual machine connects to a PXE server, it can connect to a bootable disk image (such as an operating system image or a Ghost or Altiris disk image) and start installing a guest operating system.

VMware has tested and supports the following PXE configurations with GSX Server 3: