NetRestore not working on new MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter
I NetBoot with those all the time (Thunderbolt mostly). This is an Apple dongle, right? As long as it's connected before you start up then it'll load the driver.

You can NetBoot in verbose mode. Set the Startup Disk in System Preferences then restart while holding Command-V (I usually set it permanently on test systems: sudo nvram boot-args="-v").

Not seeing any entries from that adaptor's MAC Address in the server's system.log means the traffic isn't making it to the server for some reason. You can confirm by getting a server-side packet trace (assuming you're using en0):

sudo tcpdump -i en0 -s 0 -B 524288 -w ~/Desktop/NetBoot.pcap


I usually filter in Wireshark for bootp or tftp to see how far along things get.

You can get a client-side packet trace by using either a "dumb hub" (not as common these days) or mirroring a port on the switch (assuming your network gear can do this).