Solaris Deployment Technologies Used by Change Manager

Change Manager employs the following deployment technologies for performing initial installation, update, and reinstallation operations:

• Solaris Flash installation

• Solaris Live Upgrade

• Custom JumpStart installation

Solaris Flash Installation

The Solaris Flash installation enables you to create a single reference installation of the Solaris operating environment and other software applications on a system. This system is called the master system. Then, you can replicate that reference installation on a number of systems by using the Change Manager. These systems are called managed hosts. Installing managed hosts with the Solaris Flash archive is a four-part process that involves the following:

1. Installing the master system. Select a system and use any of the Solaris installation methods to install the Solaris operating environment and any other software.

2. Installing the Change Manager agent software on the master system. The agent software is required for Change Manager to remotely control managed hosts once the software stack has been installed.

3. Creating the Solaris Flash archive. The Solaris Flash archive is a single file that contains a software stack. The archive is a copy of all the files on the master system.

4. Installing the Solaris Flash archive on managed hosts. When you install the Solaris Flash archive on a managed host, all of the files in the archive are copied to that managed host. The newly installed managed host now has the same installation configuration as the original master system.

See Chapter 4, Creating a Deployable Solaris Flash Archive (Tasks) for information about creating Solaris Flash archives.

Managed hosts are not updated by adding packages or installing patches. Instead, you update and reconfigure the master system. Then, you create a new Solaris Flash archive that contains the updated software stack. The new archive can be installed on the managed hosts in a single step.

The Solaris Flash archives must be imported to the Change Manager repository before they can be installed on managed hosts.

Solaris Live Upgrade

Solaris Live Upgrade provides a method of upgrading that substantially reduces the usual service outage that is associated with an operating system upgrade. While the active boot environment continues to run, you can install a Solaris Flash archive on the inactive boot environment. The original system configuration remains fully functional and unaffected by the installation of the Solaris Flash archive. When you reboot the system, this boot environment becomes the active boot environment.

If a failure occurs, you have a safety net. You can quickly revert to the original boot environment by performing a fall back. This fall back action eliminates the downtime associated with the normal test and evaluation process.

Change Manager uses Solaris Live Upgrade to perform updates of managed hosts. Before you can perform updates, you must perform an initial installation by using Change Manager. This initial installation must create two boot environments so that an alternate boot environment is available for the update.

For more information about Solaris Live Upgrade, see "Solaris Live Upgrade (Overview)" in Solaris 9 Installation Guide.

Custom JumpStart Installation

Custom JumpStart is a command-line interface that enables you to automatically install several systems, based on JumpStart profiles that you create. These profiles define specific software installation requirements. You can also incorporate shell scripts to include preinstallation tasks and postinstallation tasks. You choose which profile and scripts to use for installation. Custom JumpStart then installs the system.

Change Manager uses the custom JumpStart installation method to perform the initial installations and reinstallations of managed hosts.

See "Preparing Custom JumpStart Installations (Tasks)" in Solaris 9 Installation Guide.