Techniques are provided herein for optimizing boot order for devices in a data center environment. These techniques may be embodied as a method, apparatus and instructions in a computer-readable storage media to perform the method. A computing apparatus having connectivity to a network receives a service profile boot policy from a management device in the network. The service profile boot policy includes attributes identifying boot devices hosted by the computing apparatus. Data representing the service profile boot policy is stored and an order of boot devices hosted by the computing apparatus is generated. The order is generated according to the attributes of the service profile boot policy. Boot devices are excluded from the order according to the attributes of the service profile boot policy.