It is possible to run a computer with no persistent storage for its root file system other than a single image downloaded an held in RAM. The computer does not needs a local disk. The computer also does not need a SAN or NAS device for the Root File system.

There are numerous uses for this style of booting. A short list:

• Debugging the installation processes of software packages
• Running computationally intensive tasks on a large array of nodes
• Inventorying the hardware on new servers
• Deploying a light management framework for virtualization hypervisors