Network boot makes a comeback in AI hardware deployments

Enterprise teams running AI workloads on bare-metal servers are reviving network boot (PXE), a technique that lay dormant during the cloud era. Hypervisor overhead cuts into GPU performance, making direct hardware access attractive. Infrastructure-as-code practices and reproducible provisioning accelerated the shift. Tools like Bootimus—a single network boot server with built-in DHCP and automatic Linux detection—reflect this emerging infrastructure trend.