This supplement contains instructions for installing the Windows Server 2003 operating system and Linux operating system on a Sun Fire X4500 server.

Read Me First for Important Windows and Linux Installation Information

There are important considerations for successful installation of Windows and Linux on the Sun Fire X4500 server.

• If the Sun Installation Assistant CD (needed for Linux) and the Tools and Drivers CD (needed for Windows and Linux) are not available, you need to download the software from the following site:

http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4500/

• Read the following information before beginning the installation process:

Windows Installation Information

• If using a physical USB floppy drive connected to the server to supply the mass storage drivers, you must connect the drive to the upper rear USB port to be correctly recognized as A:.
• If Solaris OS is currently installed, the Windows installer will not correctly display the disk drives. To correctly select the boot drive, press Enter in the drive selection dialog.

Pressing the up or down cursor keys to scroll through the list of drives will not display the boot drive. If the cursor key is pressed, you must restart the Windows installation to be able to select the correct boot drive.

• A 48-disk system is the only supported configuration. When the system is fully populated with 48 drives, the Windows drive numbers are different than the physical drive numbers. For example, the Windows boot drive number is 24, while the corresponding physical drive number is 0.

For detailed instructions on installing the Windows operating system, see the Sun Fire X4500 Server Windows Operating System Installation Guide, 820-0407.

Linux Installation Information

• A 48-disk system is the only supported configuration. The boot device nodes are /dev/sdy which is located at slot 0 and /dev/sdac, located at slot 1. The operating system must be installed on one of these device nodes.
• To install the OS, you must use the PXE network installation or Sun Installation Assistant (SIA) software. Installation of the OS from USB CD-ROM is only supported with the use of the SIA software.
• We recommend the use of the Sun-supplied (not the Red Hat Enterprise Linux U4 64-bit distribution) Tools and Drivers software.

For detailed instructions on installing the Linux operating system, see the Sun Fire X4500 Server Operating System Installation Guide, 819-4362.