Comparing Installation Options

The following chart compares the capabilities of the various installation options.

Table 1-1 Installation Options

In addition, you have the option of Creating a Custom Oracle Solaris 11 Installation Image, including custom LiveCD images, text installer images, and automated installation images.

Simple, Preset Installations

The GUI installer on the LiveCD and the text installer are simple, preset installer methods.

• Both installers can be used to install Oracle Solaris on the x86 platform. The text installer can also be used to install Oracle Solaris on the SPARC platform.

• Both installers are capable of functioning with a minimum of memory. To check memory requirements, see Oracle Solaris 11 Release Notes.

• Both installers enable you to select, create, or modify disk partitions during an installation.

The LiveCD contains a set of software that is appropriate for a desktop or laptop. The text install media contains a smaller set of software that is more appropriate for a general-purpose server system.

The text installer has the following advantages over the GUI installer:

• Enables you to install the operating system on either SPARC or x86 based systems.

• Can be used on systems that do not have, or do not require, graphics cards.

• Can require less memory than the GUI installer, depending on your system's specifications.

• Enables manual configuration of the network and naming services.

• If the network is setup to perform automated installations, you can perform a text installation over the network by setting up an install service on the network and selecting a text installation when the client system boots.

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  Note - The package set installed by the text installer is the solaris-large-server package set. However, if you use the text installer over the network, a different, smaller package set, solaris-auto-install, is installed. After booting into the installed system, you should install the solaris-large-server package set.

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• In addition to modifying partitions, the text installer enables you to create and modify VTOC slices within the Solaris partition.

For further information about performing a simple installation, see Part II, Installing Using Installation Media.

Installations Requiring Server Setup

You can perform a “hands-free” installation of the Oracle Solaris software on single or multiple client systems by using the Automated Installer (AI) feature.

To use AI, you must first set up a server on your network. When a client system boots, the system gets installation specifications from the server, retrieves software packages from an Oracle Solaris package repository, and the software is installed on the client system.

AI can perform “hands-free” automatic network installations on both x86 and SPARC based client systems. The install clients can differ in architecture, disk and memory capacity, and other characteristics. The installations can differ in network configuration, packages installed, and other specifications.

For further information, see Part III, Installing Using an Install Server.

Once you have an AI server set up, you have two additional installation options beyond the “hands-free” network installations.

• You have the option to perform an interactive text installation over the network. The interactive installation allows you to further customize the installation specifications for any particular system.

  For further information, see Performing a Text Installation Over the Network.

• The setup for AI includes downloading AI images and storing them on the network or locally. You can burn the image to removable media, such as a CD, DVD, or for x86 installations, a USB flash drive. Then, you can boot the AI media directly on each of your systems to initiate an automated installation. Installations that use AI media are non-interactive.

  For instructions, see Chapter 5, Automated Installations That Boot From Media .