When you restart the manifest-import service, manifests in standard locations are imported and profiles in standard locations are applied if they are new or changed. See Service Bundles for manifest and profile standard locations. If importing a manifest or applying a profile results in the service being started or stopped, the appropriate method is executed if one exists.
Specifying a file in a standard location to the svccfg import command restarts the manifest-import service.
Recommended best practice is to put your manifest and profile files in the standard locations and restart the manifest-import service rather than use the svccfg import or svccfg apply commands.
$ svcadm restart manifest-import
When you restart the manifest-import service, the configuration in profiles and manifests in standard locations is applied to the appropriate layer (sysconfig-profile, node-profile, site-profile, enterprise-profile, system-profile, or manifest) of affected instances, affected instances are refreshed and validated, and a new snapshot is created. See Repository Layers for a description of each layer.
When you import or apply profiles and manifests in non-standard locations, configuration is applied to the admin layer of affected instances. Using non-standard locations is strongly discouraged for default or initial configuration delivery. For making a large number of configuration changes, importing or applying from a non-standard location might be easier than issuing many commands, but you lose the benefit of the automated management mechanisms of the manifest-import service. To manage service delivery, the manifest-import service requires known locations and expected states.
The svccfg apply command applies all configuration to the admin layer, even for manifests and profiles in standard locations.