A boot image is a type of disk image (a computer file containing the complete contents and structure of a Computer storage media). When it is transferred onto a boot device it allows the associated hardware to boot.
This usually includes the operating system, utilities and diagnostics, as well as boot and data recovery information. It also includes those "applications" used organization-wide. A specialized image for a particular type of user or department is called typically a departmental boot image. Building such an image can take days or weeks, and involve complex decisions about licensing and permissions - including which passwords to store in the boot image and which to require users to type in - and requires experts in software integration to do.
However, once built, the boot image can be simply copied onto devices, patched within reasonable limits, and remains disposable in case of any problems (viruses in particular). This is possible because unlike other hard drive images (which may contain any data, et al.), pure boot images contain no mission-critical data. By definition a pure boot image contains no data that cannot be reproduced from configurations or off-the-shelf executables. In particular end-user data is not part of a boot image, although some operating systems require that a copy of user preferences or configuration files be kept within the boot image itself, e.g. Microsoft Windows registry. Utilities like Norton Ghost keep a backup copy of the boot image, for quick re-imaging (often called re-installation) in the event of a problem, thus avoiding the need to diagnose a specific problem with a specific machine.
Read more about Boot Image: As Virtual Machine, Goals
Famous quotes containing the words boot and/or image:
“... until the shopkeeper plants his boot in our eyes,
and unties our bone and is finished with the case,
and turns to the next customer, forgetting our face
or how we knelt at the yellow bulb with sighs
like moth wings for a short while in a small place.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“For me, the child is a veritable image of becoming, of possibility, poised to reach towards what is not yet, towards a growing that cannot be predetermined or prescribed. I see her and I fill the space with others like her, risking, straining, wanting to find out, to ask their own questions, to experience a world that is shared.”
—Maxine Greene (20th century)