Patent ID: 8910235

Claim:
A method comprising: querying, by an initiator device, a storage name server for a plurality of boot targets that are in an accessible discovery domain; receiving, by the initiator device, boot target information for each of the plurality of boot targets, wherein the boot target information indicates that a first boot target of the plurality of boot targets includes a boot image and at least one second boot target of the plurality of boot targets does not include a boot image; determining, by the initiator device using the boot target information, that a login request should be sent to a first boot target based on the first boot target including the boot image; sending, by the initiator device, the login request to the first boot target, wherein the login request includes a flag specifying that the login request is a first login request to the first boot target after a reboot; and accessing, by the initiator device, a copied master boot image on the first boot target, wherein the copied master boot image was copied by a server device from a parent boot target to the first boot target in response to receiving the login request that includes the flag specifying that the login request is the first login request to the first boot target after reboot and in response to write persistency policy information indicating that writes to the first boot target should be non-persistent.