Remote virtual media

Remote virtual media is a method of connecting a remote media source (i.e. CD-ROM drive, hard disk drive, floppy disk drive, or virtual implementation of any of them) to a local system. The local system can access the remote (and possibly virtual) media and can potentially read from and write to that media as if it were physical and local. Examples of remote media include a physical disk drive of any type available remotely to a local computer. If the remote media is also virtual, it may be implemented as a file served sector by sector over a communications link such as Ethernet to the local system.

Remote virtual media is a useful tool for those who manage large numbers of computers, such as commercial IT data center managers. A local computer can boot to one of many virtual disks that can perform any variety of tasks, such as virus scans of the local physical drive and patch management—or even complete installation of the local operating system. Remote media and remote virtual media are becoming common features for standards-based server platform management subsystems such as those that support the OPMA interface.